8:23 from Hamamatsu
by MidnightRun42
Summary: In which Kurusu Akira catches a train to Tokyo a day earlier and changes everything that might have followed after. (Set Pre-Game/Post-Game so spoilers abound)
1. 8:23 from Hamamatsu

_"Anyway, there's a time and place for everything, and while this may have been the place, it wasn't the time."_  
― Jack Finney, Invasion of the Body Snatchers

 **-ooo-**

He'd left almost as soon as he'd arrived.

Just shoved his new uniform, a few pairs of socks and boxers and his toothbrush into his new school bag and slipped out the back of their darkened house before his parents returned.

There wasn't really any reason to stay.

Whatever goodbyes they would have said would have been stiff and perfunctory, nothing more than his father's heavy hand against his shoulder, his mother's strained features as she begged him to 'be good' or to 'not cause any more trouble'.

Really, he was doing them all a favor by skipping out early.

Though he doubted they'd thank him for it.

Most of his things had already been packed into a single large cardboard box on his bed where they'd just been waiting for him to tape it shut and send it on its way.

They'd probably think he was being selfish by leaving it for them to do.

They might not even be wrong about that.

But touching that box had seemed like it would be accepting his sentence as something he agreed with, something he _deserved_ and he just… couldn't.

Either way, he probably wouldn't have to hear about it.

They hadn't bothered to call or visit while he was in detention, he couldn't imagine that changing now that he'd been exiled to Tokyo.

But maybe that was for the best too.

It wasn't as if they'd ever been particularly good at pretending at happy family to begin with.

The train was crowded, packed tight with commuters and tourists and noisy kids in school uniforms that laughed too damn loud at jokes that probably weren't half as funny as they pretended they were.

He could have been one of them if he'd just minded his own business.

 _Maybe._

Or maybe he would always have ended up here one way or another regardless of what he did or didn't do that day.

Maybe not a delinquent, but something like it.

Banished to the fringes of society.

He'd thought about that a lot when he'd been staring up at the bend of the plain featureless ceiling of his cell, but he'd never really come to any kind of meaningful conclusion about it.

He'd never know for sure.

But at least this way he could live with himself.

He wasn't sure he could have lived with himself if he'd been the kind of person to stand by and do nothing.

The kind of person who just kept walking when he saw trouble on the horizon.

He got lucky a few stations down the line as a seat opened up by a window in the back of one car, somehow overlooked or ignored by the rest of the crowd. He'd thrown himself into it, tucking his bag beneath the seat, ignoring the dirty look he received from the old woman in the seat beside him. He could handle a few dirty looks if it meant the didn't have to stand all the way to Shinagawa.

Across the way, there was a boy his own age fast asleep, leaning against the window, his mouth open and his light brown hair falling to obscure his face where it was turned in against the cool of the window arms wrapped around his briefcase like he expected it to make a run for it.

He was pretty sure he was drooling, but it was tough to tell for sure.

Either way it made him smile.

It felt like it had been a really long time since he'd felt like smiling about anything.

Maybe this move would prove to be a good thing… even if it was happening for a shitty reason.

He pulled his knees up against his chest and let his head fall back against the headrest.

Outside the rain-streaked window was only the darkness of the underground, broken only occasionally by the dim safety lights of the tunnels through which they passed.

Eventually the safety lights gave way to city lights which in turn gave way to the grey dim of the countryside. Endless fields and anonymous lights floating out beyond the splash and trail of raindrops falling across glass.

At some point, he slept.

The exhaustion of long months of broken sleep pulling him down into a restless slumber.

Perhaps he dreamt, but it was nothing that stuck with him when he was startled awake some time later by the familiar clang of a guard's baton against the bars. Instinct sent him rocketing to his feet, but it was the sway and break of the train's motion that had him wobbling off balance as memory of the detention center gave way to the reality of the crowded train. Brakes squealed somewhere in the distance and before he could think to do something to prevent it, he was falling, momentum carrying him forward into the seat across from him and the lap of the person sitting in it.

And for an instant the world seemed to freeze around him, mortification flushing his skin hot with embarrassment, and then the person he'd landed on was shoving him away with a ragged burst of sound that was almost a snarl: "Get off."

It took him a second to process the demand, the whine of panic laced through the rage of those words, and the hands pressing almost frantically at his shoulders, his chest. Once he did he scrambled backwards, falling down to the floor of the aisle in a pile of uncoordinated limbs, his backpack somehow tangled around his feet though he was certain he'd tucked it safely away when he'd first sat down.

"Sorry, I…" he managed, breathless, staring up at the wild-eyed boy who was glaring down at him like he was gum to be scrapped off a shoe. It sent a shiver up his spine and left him reaching frantically for an excuse, _any_ excuse for his behavior that didn't make him feel like he had the word 'criminal' stamped across his forehead, but nothing came to mind.

For a moment, the boy above him just stared down at him, eyes narrowed as he took in his scruffy shoes and second-hand clothes. It seemed like he was breathing just as hard as he was and his gaze still seemed a bit too wide, but other than that his face was calm, almost serene until the moment his lips quirked just the tiniest bit.

It was such a weird, smug, self-satisfied look. Like he'd sized him up and found him desperately wanting.

It kind of pissed him off especially when it disappeared in the next moment, washed away beneath a veneer of polite inquiry so thin he could still hear the disdain in his voice as he asked: "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, sorry I fell on you," he replied, whatever sincerity the words might have had dying a quick and certain death on his tongue.

It wasn't like he wasn't used to people looking at him like that- even people his own age- but it still made him want to lash out, demand to know what was so bad about him, so wrong, even knowing how little such efforts would accomplish.

What was the point in getting so worked up over some jerk he'd never see again?

He snorted a laugh and shook his head, barely registering the surprise on the other boy's face as he clamored to his feet feeling annoyed and considerably less sorry and embarrassed than he'd been only moments before.

To add the cherry atop the shit sundae that his day had become, he turned back to his vacated seat to find some asshole with a briefcase and an expensive smartphone had slipped in and stolen it while he'd been busy picking himself up off the floor.

The man tapped away on his phone, dutifully ignoring the glare settled upon his downturned head.

 _Classy._

He looked like the sort who'd probably raise a stink if he called him on it too or at the very least deny it and insist he'd been sitting there all along.

A quick glance around at the way everybody else in the car seemed to be very intently minding their own business made it abundantly clear who'd end up thrown off the train for causing a disturbance if it came down to it.

He stooped down to snatch his backpack off the ground, glasses slipping down as nose as he pulled his foot free of the straps with quick, jerky rage-fueled movements.

Three months worth of sleepless nights and the adrenaline of the fall was catching up to him to beat a heavy drumbeat of discomfort through his temples, to set the blood in his veins to boil.

Such bullshit.

This was all such _bullshit_.

The world wavered around him for a moment, pulsing in time with the frantic beat of his heart.

It was almost funny how every time he thought he'd finally resigned himself to the way things were, something happened to make some small tenacious part of him begin to rail against the idea.

He was on his way to a new town, a new school, a new _world,_ but it was really just more of the same.

Just another addition to the already steep pile of misfortune that was his day, his year, his _life_. He shook his head, snorting out another sour laugh at the whole sorry situation as he climbed back to his feet, slung his backpack over his shoulder and pushed his glasses back up his nose.

Then, as if summoned by his laughter, an arm reached across the space his head had recently vacated to tap gently against the cell phone that had stolen his seat, "Pardon the intrusion, sir, but I believe this seat is taken."

The voice that spoke was calm, gently cajoling and absolutely _nothing_ like the snarling irritation of moments ago.

He had to look at him just to be sure it was the same person.

It was.

Same chestnut brown hair, same perfect skin, same huge brown eyes, and absolutely still dressed like something out of a catalog labeled 'Ideal Son Model ST4267'. He even still had that same metal briefcase tucked into the seat beside him, one gloved hand resting against it possessively.

It was really only his expression that was truly different.

Friendly, congenial, apologetic, and almost _painfully_ earnest.

It was downright _eerie_.

Cell phone man glanced up, eyes narrowed in irritation at the interruption.

There was a flash of sudden light and then the voice was speaking again, still as gentle and cajoling as before, but beneath the words there was an edge. Something sharp and hard that demanded compliance and promised swift retribution. A hint of the smug bastard who'd been looking down at him with something like satisfaction just moments before.

"What do you think you're doing?" Cell phone man snapped, irritation fading beneath an obvious surge of uncertainty.

The Stepford boy seemed vaguely surprised by the question, his lips turning down in the slightest of frowns, sincerity dripping from every word like poison,"Oh, I apologize, perhaps I should have asked permission before taking your picture. I _do_ apologize, that was a terrible oversight on my part. I just can't seem to help myself when I witness such petty injustice. Pushing someone over in an attempt to steal their seat on the train? You really should be _ashamed_ of yourself."

That hadn't been quite what had happened, but it seemed rude to interrupt the show. Besides, he was reasonably certain his erstwhile defender was perfectly aware of the facts.

"As to the picture," he continued, looking somehow even more apologetic than before. "I like to document all my trips and I've just returned from Hamamatsu. Unfortunately, as I was there for personal reasons, I didn't really have much to write about for my case blog this time so- when I witnessed such crass behavior- I thought perhaps I might instead post about such an obvious lack of basic etiquette and human kindness. It's obviously not quite up to my usual standards as it pertains to case logs and crime fighting technique, but I think this sort of social commentary might play well with my audience nonetheless. Don't worry, I'll be sure to leave your name out of it, if you chose to give it to me. Though I'm afraid I will need to post this picture to illustrate my point if you still refuse to return what you've so unfairly stolen."

The man's face was flushed red as a boiled lobster as he stood abruptly and pushed past him, almost sending careening back across the aisle a second time. Fortunately he was better prepared this time and able to brace a hand against the ceiling overhead to steady himself before slipping back into his now empty seat.

The boy across from him offered him a wan smile and a slight incline of his head before he crossed one leg over the other and turned his gaze to the window and the night beyond.

"Thanks for that," he commented, though he was pretty sure that smile had been meant to be the end of things, a brisk and efficient dismissal. "And sorry again for falling on you like I did."

"Ah, yes, well, you startled me and I was…" He trailed off, glancing back at him briefly before offering an elegant shrug as if the words to describe his behavior escaped him in much the same way he'd found himself lacking a ready excuse for his earlier tumble. "Less than gracious," he finished finally, "It was the least I could do."

Downright _eerie_.

It was like he was a completely different person.

"Have you ever seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers?"

"I- what?"

His eyes got so wide when he was startled, saucers beneath brimming tea cups.

"The movie? Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Not the shitty remake or even the pretty good remake, but the original one. The Don Siegel one? Have you seen it?"

"No, I don't… _why_ are you asking?" His voice was still perfectly pleasant, the only sign of frustration appearing in the way his fingers curled against his knees, a subtle tell.

He shrugged amiably, slumping down in his chair, a careless smile curving his lips, "You just made me think of it."

"What."

The word was bitten out through clenched teeth.

There it was again.

It was like watching a egg hatch.

Watching the delicate shell fall away to reveal something moving just beneath the surface, just out of sight, gleaming and dangerous like the first hint of scales shimmering in the sun.

If it were fully revealed, it might be nothing more sinister than a baby chick, but in its half-hidden state it seemed as if it might just as soon be something vicious and terrible waiting to rip his throat out for daring to urge it from its hiding place.

It really was a terrible habit.

And almost certainly a sign of a deeply flawed character.

This irresistible desire to pluck at loose threads.

To worry at holes.

Pick at scabs.

To step into situations that probably weren't any of his damn business.

He'd probably never learn his lesson about just leaving well enough alone.

Wasn't even sure if he wanted to.

"I'm sorry, I don't believe I caught your name?" The pleasant boy across from him inquired, his voice rattle soft as he offered him a winning smile, cheerful with just the faintest edge of self-deprecation as if he was embarrassed to be as charming as he pretended to be.

As if sugar wouldn't melt in his mouth.

The mask was firmly back in place as if it had never slipped at all, and he was using that same cajoling, gentle voice he'd used earlier with the man who'd stolen his empty seat.

But he could still see the darkness moving behind his eyes, the careful considering gaze that made him feel like a bug being slowly crushed beneath the weight of a microscope. It made his stomach flip like he'd just looked down to find himself balancing on a tightrope a thousand feet in the air.

 _Dangerous._

There was something undeniably, inescapably _dangerous_ about this pleasant boy.

"Tell me yours and I'll tell you mine," he replied easily, pushing the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows and turning his hands over, spreading his fingers wide to convey he didn't have any intention of tricking him.

As expected, the gesture went over like a lead balloon.

That deliberately pleasant smile wilted at the edges like dying flowers, the twitch at the corner of his eye returning with a vengeance. His expression was still pleasant enough, but something about that twitch made him feel like if they'd been alone, he might just have climbed into his seat and wrapped his hands around his neck... and that should have not been _nearly_ as interesting a prospect as it seemed to him in that moment. "Why?"

"I don't have any friends and I wouldn't mind making one."

"I can't say I'm surprised you have no friends," he sniffed, lips quirking into a lopsided smirk. "You don't seem a very pleasant person."

His stomach was full of fish, a fresh catch still squirming and flipping about, desperate for oxygen, "I suppose not. Of course, neither do you."

"I have no idea what you're talking about. I am an _incredibly_ pleasant person," he lied through his straight white teeth.

He wanted to lick them.

To climb into his seat and lick the lies right out of his mouth to see if they tasted vile or sweet.

He really needed to pull it together.

Clearly the stress of the last few months had managed to rattle something loose in his _brain_.

Shoving his tongue uninvited into some stranger's mouth on a crowded train was probably a really terrible way to begin any kind of relationship, much less the friendship he'd been angling for.

"That's a shame," he sighed instead, shoving aside those thoughts as he closed his eyes and settled back into his chair. Exhaustion was still heavy in his chest, his head, it made him feel strange, reckless, "I think the asshole who was ready to toss me off the train for falling on him was way more interesting."

Silence was his only answer and eventually he drifted back to sleep.

He dreamt of blue rooms, of shadows and pod people and the clang of a baton against prison bars.

He woke slowly, his head filled with sludge, his tongue swollen and thick in his mouth.

 _Thirsty._

There's a hand wrapped loosely around his wrist.

It reminds him of his parents' cat.

The light, careful warning of her paws pressing against his arm when she was demanding attention, as if the careless scratch of neatly clipped nails against his inner wrist carried the same threat of claws.

"You should wake up. We'll be arriving in Tokyo soon," the soft, pleasant voice commented.

He opened his eyes to find him looking at him intently, mask firmly in place but for the intensity of his gaze. His smile was polite and prefunctory and he released his hold on him the moment he moved to sit up.

It was probably just as well.

They were nothing more than strangers with a common destination, after all.

His neck ached, stiff from falling asleep at a strange angle. He rolled his head back and forth, but it did little to help ease the pain.

He could feel the force of his attention - heavy as a blanket thrown over his head and weirdly just as successful at making him forget about the crowded train beyond them - as he bent down and unzipped his backpack, fishing around for the water bottle he'd bought at the station. That attention didn't waver as he found the bottle and took a drink, didn't fail in the slightest even as he took his time tucking the bottle back into his bag and the bag back under his seat.

It felt expectant and when he finally glanced up to meet his stare, he found him frowning at him as if he was a puzzle he couldn't quite solve.

There was something satisfying about being looked at like that.

"Thanks for waking me," he offered uncertainly, not quite sure what else to say.

He looked a little startled by that, though whether it was because of the thanks or something else, he wasn't sure.

 _Definitely weird_ , he thought, smiling to himself as he turned to look out the window. The night didn't seem nearly as dark with the bright lights of the city in the distance growing brighter with each passing moment as they rocketed ever closer to their final destination.

"I have seen it," he said out of nowhere drawing Akira's attention away from the window once more.

He looked so expectant that it made him feel like kind of an asshole for not immediately knowing what the hell he was talking about. His confusion must have shown in his expression, because in the next moment he was smiling wryly and offering an explanation.

"The movie you mentioned, I have seen it."

 _Ah_.

"Have you?"

"Yes, it's about people being replaced by emotionless versions of themselves, right?" He replied sounding for all the world as if he'd read a summary online.

"Are you sure you didn't just look it up on your phone to make sure I wasn't insulting you?"

He'd meant it just as a tease, but his cheeks had instantly flushed with color, his eyes widening in the most obvious put-on he'd ever _seen_.

"Of course not," he scoffed, his voice working overtime to convey maximum bewilderment. "Why in the world would I do something like _that_?"

 _Why?_ He had no idea, but he absolutely had.

Why not just let it drop?

Was it a matter of pride?

Did he really just want an excuse to ask him why he'd brought it up in the first place?

Whatever the reason… it was kind of… interesting.

 _He_ was kind of interesting.

And _weird_.

 _Definitely_ weird.

The decision to play along, to see where this was going, what he wanted, was an easy one.

"Sorry, you're right. I was trying to make a joke. Obviously my sense of humor needs work. So, do you like it?"

"Oh, I, um, that is I don't remember it very well. I was quite small when I saw it, you see."

"Were you?"

"Quite. Why did you ask me if I'd seen it?"

"Maybe I was just making conversation."

And there was the twitch again, just a barely visible.

"It didn't seem like an idle question."

"So, you like science fiction?"

"Not particularly," he replied, fingertips pressed so hard against his briefcase that he was kind of surprised he hadn't yet accidentally snapped them off. "I don't have very much time for such frivolous diversions these days. I suppose I liked it well enough when I was young."

"What'd you like?"

"Godzilla, mostly."

"Me too. Which was your favorite?"

"The original, I suppose," he sighed, his frustration starting to bleed into his voice.

"See, I always liked Mothra vs. Godzilla best."

"I haven't seen that one."

"That's too bad. It's really good. School keep you busy?"

"Quite. I also have a job that takes up much of my limited free time."

"Isn't that kind of frowned upon?"

"My school doesn't have any rules prohibiting it."

"And your parents?"

That pleasant smile turned brittle again, "That's never been an issue for me."

He wanted to ask. So badly. Instead he merely nodded as if that answer satisfied, "What do you do?"

"Would you like to guess?"

There it was again, that whisper of danger, that peek beneath the mask.

"Stunt driver," he answered gamely.

It surprised a laugh out of him, high and a little obnoxious and strangely endearing, "What about me makes you think that?"

"That a no?"

"No," he replied, still chuckling, "not a stunt driver."

"Day care attendant?"

"No, I'm actually terrible with children."

"Are you?"

"Don't believe me?"

"I haven't decided yet. So that's a 'no' to day care attendant?"

"I'm afraid so."

"IT specialist?"

"I'm decent with computers, but I'd hardly call myself a specialist."

"Ghost writer?"

"What would I write?"

"Self-help?"

"Absolutely not," he replied his smile, taking a turn towards self-deprecating. "I'm a mess."

"Science fiction? Cookbooks?"

"I suppose I might enjoy the first, but I'd be hopeless at the second."

"Don't cook?"

"Not really, most of my meals come from the convenience store, I'm afraid."

"Mine too. Though cup noodles have been known to put in an appearance from time to time."

His nose scrunched up like he found something particularly odious about the words.

"Not a fan?"

"No."

"Your loss."

"You cannot possibly tell me you enjoy them. They taste like cardboard despair."

"Only if you don't season them properly," he shrugged.

"Or possibly you just enjoy the taste of cardboard."

"Or despair, hard to say really."

"I suppose that's true. I'm not a ghost writer, by the way."

"I can't imagine you behind a counter."

"Really? My manners are impeccable. I think I'd be well-suited for work as a clerk if I had the urge."

"Really? I'm pretty sure you'd kill someone the first time they spilled something and you had to clear up their mess."

His smile went brittle, fragile as cracked glass, as if any sudden movement might cause it to break and slice them both to pieces, "Do I?"

There was something about that moment that made it feel as if he were balanced at the edge of a precipice, as if what he said next might cause the world to shift on its axis.

"Yeah, you really do," he answered honestly.

Silence fell between them as he sat back in his seat and turned to stare out the window, the fall of his dark hair obscuring his expression.

 _Fuck._

Maybe he should have lied.

Or maybe that distance between them had always been unbridgeable.

It was a weirdly disappointing thought.

Akira sighed, turning to look out the window as well, where the no longer distant lights of Tokyo seemed dim beneath the reflection of the brightly lit car.

It made it look utterly foreign, as if it were a strange unknowable world rather than just another city.

He wondered what his new place would be like, how he would fit within it.

What would his life would look like now that he was a delinquent on probation?

Would it be better than the life he'd led before?

Worse?

Just the same loneliness and monotonous misery with a different view?

In the detention center he'd at least known what to expect from each day.

And before that….

His life had been… very similar if he were honest.

Scheduled, regimented, blocked in by the expectations of authority figures and made bearable only by those small freedoms, those little ways his own desires had pressed against those boundaries, forced them to yield just a little to accommodate the shape of who he was rather than what they expected him to be.

Perhaps one prison was never truly much different from another.

"You asked my name before," the not-so-pleasant boy commented suddenly, his voice soft, almost uncertain. His gaze - when he glanced over hoping to catch it - was still trained on the city in the distance. "You don't know who I am?"

"Should I?" He answered easily, turning his own gaze back to the window and the lights beyond though it strayed almost instantly to his companion's pale features reflected in the glass, a blurry vision have hidden by refracted light. "Are you famous or something?"

If he hadn't been watching, he probably wouldn't have noticed the way he flinched at that, as if he'd struck him a casual blow, "Something like that."

"That's okay. Happens to the best of us," he replied thinking of his own situation; of his name, his face, splashed across the newspapers in his parents' house.

He wasn't sure why they'd saved them, but they'd been piled up on a table in the living room when he returned home like the world's most awkward coffee table book.

The start of a conversation he didn't want to have.

His memory of the last hearing was too fresh. The way they'd looked in the courtroom, the defeated hunch of their shoulders, the way they'd apologized again and again and the hurry with which they'd agreed to his sentence.

As if it was fair.

As if it were a _gift_.

No, that was a conversation he had no intention of having.

It had been those newspapers as much as anything that had sent him back to his room to shove that haphazard collection of essentials into his bag and sent him running out the door to the station.

He hadn't been able to _breathe_ in that house with them there.

"Was that really the best you could do?"

He hadn't realized he'd zoned out until the boy was speaking again, snapping his attention back to reality, "Huh?"

"You were guessing what I do for work," he reminded him, offering him the kind of smile people gave to small children and idiots.

It made him want to guess the right answer just to spite him.

"Law enforcement."

His expression didn't change.

He barely even blinked.

"Do you think so? I assure you, I'm a perfectly normal high school student."

He removed his gloves slowly, placing them neatly in his lap before shrugging out of his jacket and unbuttoning his sleeves, rolling them carefully up his forearms before spreading his hands out between them in an echo of the gesture he'd used earlier.

 _Nothing up my sleeves._

It made him smile as warmth bubbled in his chest like laughter.

Maybe he wasn't the only one looking for a connection.

He slouched back in his chair, smile still playing over his lips, "So all that about case blogs and crime fighting techniques was just a bluff?"

"Oh, that… well, what do you think? Truth or Lie?"

"Truth. You keep a crime fighting blog?"

"Do I seem the sort?"

"Yeah, you kind of do."

"Well, I can assure you that I'm not an undercover police officer, if that's what you're thinking."

"It wasn't."

"What then?"

"I don't know," he replied, because he didn't. He didn't know what to think of this boy and all his contradictions. "But that guy didn't seem to doubt you at all which meant he probably knew who you were."

"But you don't so I can't possibly be as well-known as I thought."

"Maybe," he shrugged, "I don't get out much."

"Don't you? Interesting."

"It really isn't."

Silence falls between them once more, comfortable this time, as if they've simply hit a natural lull in the conversation rather than an ending.

"Justice."

"What?"

"You asked for a name."

Akira snorted, leaning back in his chair, "Funny, you don't look like a Justice."

"Don't I?"

He watched unidentifiable emotions chase across his face like clouds drifting before the moon, shadows there and gone again.

 _Justice._

The word only reminds him of the clang of batons against bars, the bang of a gavel, the smug smile of the prosecutor, and the sound of anonymous sobs breaking the silence of each night he'd spent in detention and how they'd also seemed to be coming from a different direction as if the ability to express misery was turn-based.

"Justice isn't nearly as pretty as you," he answered, soft and serious, the faintest hint of bitter on his tongue.

The boy who called himself Justice laughed and it was like bells shivering in the wind, "That's a particularly jaded take on it."

"It's been a challenging year," he replied, smiling. "What's your excuse?"

"It's the only thing I believe in."

"And you call me jaded."

"I suppose it takes one to know one, doesn't it?" He replied, smile soft as summer rain, warm and real and he wants to feel it beneath his fingertips as if by touching it he can memorize it and take it with him so that he'll remember that smile long after his other memories of this boy have been faded by the passage of time.

"I suppose it does," he answered, keeping his hands safely tucked between his knees.

Still, there was something about him that made him want to be brave, daring, made him want to do whatever it took to keep him talking, to keep the conversation going, to postpone the inevitable.

Finally he leaned forward, pushing his glasses up further on his nose even though they didn't truly need the nudge.

"You can call me Joker," he offered, pitching his voice low.

It should feel silly.

Somehow it doesn't.

"Why Joker?" The boy called Justice asked, his nose wrinkling a bit in confusion.

He could have told him that they'd started calling him that on his second day in detention.

But it would probably spoil everything.

He had picked a name like Justice, after all, and with that case blog… he wasn't certain what to think. He either had an extraordinary sense of irony or his family was in law enforcement or maybe he was just really into detective novels, it was impossible to say for certain and he had no intention of messing up the first semi-normal conversation he'd had with anyone in months.

And the fact that he'd just thought that probably said a lot for what his year had been like since there wasn't really anything in this conversation that anyone else would consider normal.

"Makes about as much sense as Justice," he shrugged instead, keeping the truth tucked away behind his teeth.

A quirk of a smile, like curdled milk, "I suppose that's true."

"Tell me three things about yourself."

"Just three?"

"That's the game. Three things. Two lies, one truth."

"Ah, I see, and then you would do the same, I assume?"

"Sure."

"Anything at all?"

"Yup, it can be as lame and impersonal as you like."

He chuckled a little at that, smiling again though the expression didn't quite reach his eyes,"You don't think I have any deep dark secrets to confess?"

"I wouldn't say that, but you don't strike me as the sort to confess them to a random stranger."

"Is anyone likely to do that?"

"Beats me."

"Fine. Hm, I like dark coffee, late night television and the only thing I actually know how to cook are pancakes."

"Just pancakes?"

"No, I can follow directions just fine so I'm certain I can cook many things."

"Ah, so you like dark coffee then?"

"What you don't think I enjoy late night television?"

"And waste what precious little free time you have?"

"Point taken. I do enjoy coffee. Perhaps more than I should."

"Is that possible?"

"It's a bit of an expensive vice."

"Your job doesn't pay well?"

"It pays well enough," he replied, which seemed an answer directly adjacent to 'none of your fucking business' based on the sheer brightness of the smile that went with it.

He let it go and made an offering of his own: "I once caught six fish in a single day. I took ballet lessons until I was twelve and my glasses are entirely for show."

"You like to fish?" He sounded so puzzled when he said it as if the very concept that someone might enjoy such a thing was completely beyond him that he found himself laughing.

"It's _relaxing_."

"Is it?" As if he was looking for the lie.

"It can be. You should try it sometime."

"Do you think so?"

"Sure, why not?"

"I think I might look quite foolish. I haven't the least idea what to do."

"Just bait the line and drop it in the water, remember to keep a good grip on your rod and reel it in if you get a bite. Not much to it beyond that."

"So you say," he replied, doubtfully. "I enjoy history and English, but I'm terrible at math."

"No one likes history."

That slim, quirky smile again, the weird one that looked so real when compared to all the rest, "I suppose that was an easy one."

"It was. Though it's difficult to believe you're terrible at math."

"It's true. I don't have the patience for it at all."

"Really?"

"Truly."

"Next station: Shinagawa."

Akira blinked up at the ceiling in confusion certain he'd misheard even as the announcement sounded again.

Somehow it seemed like it should have taken longer.

He sighed, glancing back at his companion to find he was checking the latches on his briefcase and straightening his clothing. "Are you switching at Shinagawa Station as well?"

"I am," he replied, smiling that wan, apologetic smile. "It seems we'll have to cut our game short."

"It's fine, I need to switch over to the Yamanote Line. I'm heading to Shibuya."

"That's an interesting coincidence. So am I."

"Then I guess we'll be together a little while longer yet."

"I suppose so," he replied, that pleasant mask making it impossible to tell if he were pleased or irritated by the idea as he stood and sidled out into the aisle, apologizing softly as he moved to each person he passed.

They slipped into the aisle and filed slowly through the standing crowd towards the doors.

"You reminded me of it," Akira commented as they came to a stop together next to the nearest set of doors.

"Hm?" He replied distractedly, as he fiddled with his phone, tapping out a message with his thumbs.

The train's brakes squealed a little and they swayed together as the brakes slammed harder and the boy who'd called himself Justice was thrown off-balance, colliding with his chest even as he reached up to catch hold of a strap to keep them both from falling. He set a hand against his waist to hold him steady, a little surprised when he made no immediate move to jerk away.

"Okay?"

"I'm fine," he didn't quite snap the words, but it was close. He slipped the phone back into his pocket, "What were you saying? About me reminding you of something?"

"Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It's the way you were acting," he murmured, leaning forward so he could whisper the words against the fall of his hair. "The pretense. You said all the right words and made the right gestures in the right tone of voice, but the feeling just wasn't there. It makes me think you're not what you're pretending to be."

"Then who am I?" He asked, shifting his head to the side, expression still hidden from view even as his hair brushed soft against his chin, his lips.

He smelled clean and crisp, the way sour apples tasted, "I don't know, but I'd like to."

He turned at that and there was nothing of that pleasant facade in his face now. His eyes seem darker than they had before and when he speaks, he's close enough that he can feel the warmth of his breath against his face, "If you tell me your name, you might find out more than you ever wanted to know."

It felt like a dare.

The soft automated feminine tones of the overhead announcement rang out again announcing their arrival at Shinagawa Station as the train slowed, reminding them to mind their step.

The train ground to a stop and for a moment they were pressed so close that he could feel the brush of his lips against his cheek. It would have been the simplest thing in the world to turn into him, to brush their lips together, brief and unseen in the distraction and crush of the crowd around them, but he didn't.

Instead he stepped away, swallowing the desire down and hitching his backpack up onto his shoulder.

"Kurusu Akira," he says in a rush, because he can't help himself. Maybe all his decisions are terrible, but if there was one thing that the past few months had taught him it's that he can't be anyone but himself and he doesn't want to be either.

Whatever the cost.

So, he smiles as if it doesn't hurt when the brief flare of surprise darkens with realization, "I guess this is goodbye then, huh? See you around, Justice."

The crowd had already begun moving towards the exit so it doesn't look like a retreat to turn and move with them, to just let the flow of traffic propel him out into the unfamiliar station and along into the central corridor.

It isn't difficult to find a map, to use the signs to navigate his way through the station to the correct platform.

He doesn't have to even really think about it.

Or anything else for that matter.

He's waiting on the outer platform for his train to arrive when he sees him step up beside him, briefcase held neatly in front of him.

For long moments there is only silence between them, but it doesn't last.

"Akechi," he offers quietly, gaze trained straight ahead across the empty tracks as if he's speaking to himself. "Akechi Goro."

The name sounds vaguely familiar, but he has no idea where he's heard it before or if he even really has.

He laughs, a weird bitter twist of sound, still not quite looking at him, "You really don't know who I am, do you?"

"Did you think I did?"

"Most people do," he murmured, words almost lost beneath the murmur of the crowd, the announcements echoing across the station. "Even the ones who lie and say they don't. But you're not a liar, are you, Kurusu-kun? Just a joker."

"Everyone is to one extent or another, aren't they?"

"A joker or a liar?"

"A bit of both, probably."

"Jaded."

"Realistic."

The air stirred around them with the rumble of the oncoming train growing louder by the moment.

He felt a hand against the small of his back, a firm, steady pressure just below the weight of his backpack.

It felt like goodbye.

"It was nice talking to you, Akechi Goro," he sighed, glancing down the tunnel towards the shine of headlights against the curve of the wall that signaled the train's imminent arrival.

"Was it?"

"Yeah, it really was."

The train blew his hair back as it passed them by and the firm press of Akechi's hand against his back had vanished by the time the doors of the car slid open before them.

They stood together silently on the crowded train. Not quite close enough to touch or close enough that anyone would think they even knew each other, but close enough that it was easy to fall into step with him when they both spilled out onto the platform at Shibuya Station.

"I'm heading to Yongen-Jaya, so I'm this way," he commented as he caught sight of a sign overhead pointing him in the right direction.

"Then I believe this is where we part ways, Kurusu-kun."

"I guess so."

Still they lingered as if neither of them wanted to be the first to force the inevitable end of their time together.

"Don't suppose you'd be interested in getting coffee sometime?" He asked, even though he was pretty sure he already knew the answer.

"I…" Akechi hesitated, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth briefly before finally shaking his head. "I don't think that will be possible."

Akira laughed, nodding his head and glancing away towards his platform as if doing so might hide his disappointment, "Right. You're very busy."

"I am," Akechi agreed, "though I won't insult you by pretending that's the reason."

"Well, I can't fault you for being honest, can I?" He replied, shaking his head and hitching his backpack more firmly onto his shoulder as he turned away. "It's not pleasant, but you should still try to do it more often, it really is a nice look on you. Take care of yourself, Akechi Goro."

"Yes, I will. I… really did enjoy meeting you, Kurusu Akira."

He sounded so sincere when he said that it made the rejection of moments before sting all the more.

He waved a hand back over his shoulder as a final farewell before shoving his hands into his pockets and walking away to face whatever life awaited him in Yongen-Jaya.

He didn't look back, but he was certain he felt the weight of that heavy gaze long after it should have turned away.

 **-ooo-**

 **NOTES:**

I've obviously assumed that Akechi would have been used to tie up the loose ends associated with Kurusu's legal troubles pre-game, because it seems like a reasonable leap. He wouldn't have been able to succeed due to the location of Mementos, but I think an attempt would have been made. Plus, obviously, Akechi was no stranger to just outright killing folks. (Which is really just a long way of saying: I'm just going to twist canon to suit my sinister plans and that's just what's happening here.)

Also, it makes sense to me that Kurusu would have spent time in detention prior to his hearing. I assumed that since Shido is a real of son of a bitch he would have arranged for Kurusu to be held for a lengthy period of time. So between his initial holding period and multiple hearings, I've decided he was probably in detention for a total of three months.

I checked around a bit and no one had a definitive answer as to where Kurusu is actually from except that it is almost certainly not Inaba so I just rolled with Hamamatsu as it looked about right for the short scenes we see of his hometown and it was a reasonable distance from Tokyo.

Also, my Kurusu is a film dork and he loves science fiction because *reasons*.


	2. An Honest Adversary: Paid in Spades

_"There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream."_  
\- Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

 **-ooo-**

 **Please Note**

This story is an Akechi counterpoint to _8:23 from Hamamatsu._ In terms of timeline this one wraps around it to make these two stories into what is basically a rather bad-tempered Akechi & Kurusu PoV burrito. So, if you're wondering where this fits, this story begins that morning. This particular story is two chapters in length and the second chapter will be added soon. Thank you.

 **-ooo-**

In the end, he hadn't had to do a thing.

Not really.

He'd barely brushed her elbow and she'd startled away from him like a frightened deer, tripped, and fallen right into the street.

And that was that.

He couldn't have stopped it if he'd wanted to.

He couldn't stop time, after all.

The squeal of tires, impact, the crunch of metal, the crack of glass, and the screams of dozens of onlookers as blood splattered across the car, the road.

There'd been so much screaming.

He doubted anyone had noticed a teenage boy slipping away during the ensuing panic as the crowd dispersed like a flock of pigeons startled by a child's shout. Some scrambled out into the street to help or -more likely- to _gawk_ and still more fled the scene altogether, traumatized by what they'd seen or eager not to be caught up in things that had nothing to do with them. It was easy to blend in with those who wished to go unnoticed and unremarked themselves.

He wasn't certain when he'd broken from the pack. Only that he'd eventually found himself striding alone down one street and then another and another, turning at random, paying no real attention to his surroundings or the direction that he was taking so long as it was _away_.

The sound of the impact had been far too loud, so loud he couldn't seem to shake it, instead it was caught, echoing, looping through his mind over and over in time with his steps, steady and unwavering as a heartbeat.

Th-Thump.

Th-Thump.

 _Th-Thump._

 **-ooo-**

When he finally stopped- out of breath, head throbbing- it was to brace gloved fingers against the lid of an ancient trash can for support and empty the contents of his stomach across the front page of yesterday's newspaper and an old brown loafer with a hole in the sole.

He couldn't remember what he'd had for breakfast, but whatever it had been had been bland and tasteless and, apparently, bright orange.

If he were more himself, he'd probably have been horrified by the lack of self-control.

It wasn't the vomiting that would have bothered him, of course. This wasn't the first time the things he'd done had made him physically ill and he was certain it wouldn't be the last.

No, it was that he was doing it in an alley, in broad daylight, directly off a main thoroughfare, where anyone might see him.

Less than fifty feet away from where he stood staring down apathetically at the mess he'd made, dozens of people were hurrying this way and that past the mouth of the alley.

He doubted they'd have spared him a glance even if they had noticed him, he knew better than most that people only ever saw what they wanted to see.

Plus, even if they did see him, they'd probably dismiss him as a drunken college student or some other undesirable.

No one of note, _surely_.

Still, that was no reason to take stupid chances.

 _Th-thump._

His heart was still racing, the vestiges of adrenaline lingering in his veins.

It wasn't supposed to be like that.

It should have been simple, clean.

But where there was usually power and welcoming darkness there had been... _nothing_.

Somehow it had never occurred to him that his power, such as it was, might not function outside Tokyo. That that shadow world that lay beneath Shibuya might exist only there and nowhere else.

It didn't make any _sense_.

After all, he'd felt those eyes on him long before he'd first ventured into Tokyo. Felt the weight of that gaze upon him long before he'd left Inaba and his last foster family behind with that key clutched in his hand.

Sometimes it seemed as if he'd always felt that way, as if there had always been someone staring at him from somewhere just out of sight. When he'd been small, he'd pretended it was a comforting feeling, the feeling of his mother watching over him, perhaps. When you're a child, it's easy to convince yourself that foolish, impossible things are true. As he'd grown older, it had made him feel uneasy, paranoid. It made it difficult to sleep, to eat, to bathe.

Now… now he thought it was probably God- or _a_ god, at least- watching to see what he did with the extraordinary power he'd been given.

Some days that thought made him feel righteous.

Some days it just made him feel sick.

"Get it together before someone that matters sees you," he muttered even as his stomach rumbled and rebelled against him once more, the sour burn of bile, sharp and vile, filling his mouth once more.

His eyes stung and watered and his throat felt as if it had been scrapped raw.

He wasn't sure why this one had felt so different from all the others, but it had.

Perhaps it was because he hadn't had that place, that power to aid him, to give him distance and perspective.

More likely it was because he hadn't finished the job.

He couldn't have said how he knew, but he was certain that she wasn't dead.

Not _yet_ anyway.

It had been an accident, unavoidable.

He couldn't have finished the job even if he'd wanted to.

 _Th-thump._

The street had been too crowded.

There'd been too many potential witnesses.

Escape had been his best and only option.

And now….

Now it didn't matter.

He was so close to the finish and that man… he was getting sloppy. So confident, so certain of his own triumph. If he told him the job was done, he'd never think to check.

And he could always come back and see to her later if it proved necessary.

Though he doubted it would.

Shido Masayori would have far more pressing worries soon enough, after all.

He wouldn't have time to worry about the fate of some woman in Hamamatsu, no matter what she'd done to piss him off in the first place.

Not that he really had any idea what it had been.

She was just a clerk, no one special.

The most notable thing she'd ever done had been to serve as a witness for an assault case and even that had been nothing special.

No one had been severely injured, the juvenile offender that had been detained had already been released on a year's probation and Shido hadn't asked him to kill _him_.

He barely even remembered her name though he'd just reviewed the police records on her just last night. Aoki, maybe? Akiyama? Something with an A. Or maybe an H.

Not that her name mattered since the damn cognitive world only existed in fucking _Tokyo_.

In some distant way, he was a bit horrified by how little those details like names and what they'd done mattered to him anymore.

In the beginning, he was sure he'd agonized about these sorts of things.

Or maybe he just liked to think that he had.

Maybe it had always been this easy.

Either way, whatever part of him could still be bothered by such matters was small and soft and easily ignored.

He'd already come so far.

What was the point in drawing a line in the sand now?

He'd already decided that there was no price he wouldn't pay to see that man suffer, to see him lose _everything_ that had ever mattered to him in the most humiliating manner possible.

That would have to be enough.

For him and for everyone he'd sacrificed to make it this far.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, lips brushing a trail of filthy damp over expensive swede before he realized what he was doing and grimaced, staring down at the darkened swede in horror.

Those fucking gloves had cost half what he'd earned on his last case.

They were _nice_.

And now they were ruined.

 _Ruined_.

Ruined like his image if anyone saw him here, if anyone _knew_.

All his plans, all his work, all the sacrifices he had made.

It would all have been for _nothing_.

Fuck.

 _Fuck._

No, maybe it wasn't so bad.

Maybe he could have them cleaned.

It was fine.

It was just an annoyance, not a tragedy.

He was making mountains out of...

And then he saw it.

A little speck of dark on his thumb, round and perfect and he knew.

He _knew_ it was blood.

 _Her_ blood.

 _Th-Thump._

"There's no trap so deadly as the one you set for yourself," he murmured absently, hands quaking as he scrapped clumsy, trembling fingers across the gloves, scratching jagged nails over his skin as he removed them and tossed them to the ground at his feet.

 _Fuck._

He had to get rid of them.

This wasn't... they tied him to the scene.

To _her_.

 _Th-Thump._

They would ruin _everything_.

He needed to _burn_ them.

That was the only way to be sure.

To be safe.

 _Th-Thump._

He just had to find a market, buy a cheap lighter and a little fuel.

He had some cash on him, not a lot, but enough for this.

He could light a fire in a trash can, any trash can, and tear the material to pieces, watch each shred turn to ash, as the rising smoke made his eyes water and ache.

Only then would he be sure.

Only then would he be _safe_.

 _Th-Thump._

The world shivered around him.

His skin feels tight, hot, he can't breathe, all the oxygen is gone, burned away, leaving him gasping in the aftermath.

Aches sprout like weeds as he dropped to the ground, back burning where it scraps across the wall behind him, shirt and jacket riding up.

Someone's crying.

 _Th-Thump._

He wished they would stop.

 _Th-Thump._

He fucking hates that sound.

 _Th-Thump._

Hates it.

 _Th-Thump._

There was no point to crying.

Tears never made anything better.

He was fine.

He just needed a moment.

Just needed to think past the incessant throbbing in his head.

Everything would be fine.

He was Akechi Goro, the second coming of the Detective Prince, adored by hundreds... thousands. He was helpful, he was needed, he was necessary.

Everything he'd done was _necessary_.

Everything he'd done was a means to an end.

Everyone had the right to seek justice in their own way.

He gasped and shook and clawed frantically for his lost composure.

He didn't have the _time_ for this.

He had a schedule to keep and a train to catch.

This hadn't been any different from driving someone mad, from killing shadows.

He hadn't even done anything, not really.

She wasn't even dead yet.

Probably.

He was being _stupid_.

The blood didn't prove anything except that he'd been there.

Even if someone saw it, there was no reason they'd think it was blood and not just... grease or something.

He needed to pull it together.

He was better than this.

He had to be.

Time marched on, slow and inevitable, as he sat panting in that filthy alley, watching the sun's steady progression in the shadows that shrunk around him, retreating reluctantly back beneath the objects from whence they came as the sun rose overhead. The shadow that is cast on the ground beneath his bowed heads is dark and bulbous, it's shape growing firm and sharp.

When he finally roused himself enough to glance around, the alley looked different than it had, exposed in a way it hadn't been before the noonday sun enough to glare down heartlessly into that narrow strip of street in which he sat.

It was far dirtier than he'd thought it to be.

Because _of course_ it was.

He'd be lucky if he hadn't accidentally sat in something truly revolting.

Or given himself hepatitis by scrapping his stupid back against the filthy wall.

 _Fuck._

He was almost certainly going to reek of the sour sweet tang of ancient garbage.

And it would be no more than he deserved for freaking out over _nothing_.

He slipped his phone from his pocket.

12:50

And he'd missed his train.

Because _of course_ he'd missed his fucking train.

Normally that would have bothered him.

Today it just left him feeling cold and uneasy.

He'd been sitting long enough on the filthy ground that his butt and back and legs ache and tingle as he shifted and stretched the muscles tentatively.

His gloves lay in the dirt like dead animals where he'd thrown them.

Which, come to think of it, they were.

He chuckled a little at the thought, burying his face against his bent knees.

He was such a mess.

If anyone saw him now... he'd have to just murder them and toss them in the dumpster because there'd be no coming back from this.

 _ **Promising Young Detective Has Nervous Breakdown in Filthy Alley**_

The ink the headline was written in wouldn't even have time to dry before Shido sent someone to put a bullet in his head.

Maybe he could just live the rest of his short sad life in the cognitive world killing shadows and eating monster meat.

If he was very lucky he might even be able to sneak into Shido's palace and kill him before he finally went completely mad and topped himself.

 _Maybe._

The gloves were still lying on the ground, distressingly close to the splatter of tacky orange nastiness near the trashcan.

He couldn't just leave them there.

He couldn't burn them either.

What would people think if they saw him?

What would they say?

Maybe he'd get lucky and no would recognize him even if they did see him. After all, someone like Akechi Goro - model student, esteemed junior detective, general upright citizen- wouldn't be caught dead lighting trashcan fires in some shitty backalley in Hamamatsu.

Still... there was no point in taking stupid chances.

It wasn't worth the risk.

Not now.

Not after he'd come so far.

Not when he was finally so close to the end.

Releasing a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, he climbed to his feet, muscles shrieking protest.

A sound like thunder rumbled in the distance and when he chanced a glance up at the sky, he found the sun had vanished beneath a sliver of mottled grey.

That was fast.

Still, it wasn't exactly unwelcome

The rain would wash away every last trace of his presence here so long as he was cautious. So long as he kept it together. He picked up his briefcase from where he must of dropped it when he came pelting down the alley in the first place and placed it reverently on the dented trashcan, glad to discover it had somehow escaped being scuffed by the tumble. It was expensive and he didn't want to have to purchase another. Bad enough that he was going to have to burn his clothes when he arrived home. He entered the code for the lock and opened it before bending to retrieve his gloves from the dirty ground.

He traveled light, he always had.

Fresh gloves, a few case files, his phone charger and a book.

The brilliant red cover was dulled by age, the spine cracked by heavy, careless use. He'd brought it along as much for the familiarity and comfort of the read as the good it would do his image. It was like his own private joke. A fictional detective reading about a fictional detective. Sure, some might find it a touch pretentious, but it served a practical purpose as well. It gave people who were determined to speak with him an easy avenue of discussion and it gave those who were less hell-bent on doing so an excuse not to.

Whenever anyone asked he told them he'd picked the book up in a secondhand bookstore.

A lie.

But no one ever questioned it.

Or even seemed to notice that he only ever carried the one book.

He'd read others, of course, but this was the only one he'd ever bothered to keep.

Not that that it meant anything in particular.

He'd just always liked this one,

He traced his finger across the cover, pressing his thumb over the little white splotch of a man penned in by the barrels of four different guns as if he could blot the poor bastard out, make him disappear.

 **-ooo-**

"You don't mind, do you?" He had commented as he closed the file and offered it to him as if it were some grand gesture, as if he were doing him a _favor_ by allowing him to do his dirty work for him.

The smile he offered along with that file was the same mixture of condescension and trite that he must have thought looked genuine for as often as he made use of it.

"You're the only one I can trust with such a sensitive matter."

Lies. Lies. Lies. _Lies._

Looking at that smile always made him feel like he'd swallowed a bucket of broken glass.

"You're so dependable," he continued, cajoling and amiable, every inch the glad-handing politician.

Shido Masayori.

Man of the people.

Savior of Japan.

The headline practically wrote itself:

 ** _Political Maverick Murders His Way to the Top_**

The sun was bright outside the windows of his office, it's glare reflecting obnoxiously off the expensive metal frames of that man's horrifically pretentious glasses.

Did he think they made him look cool?

 _Plip. Plip. Plop._

There was a sink in the corner of the room that seemed to have a permanent leak.

 _Plip. Plip. Plop._

Sometimes he'd find himself so distracted listening to it that it was almost impossible to focus on anything else.

The blood had looked almost black against the pale floor, just a dark stain where it had soaked into the bathmat.

Her hand had seemed so pale, stained and sticky with thick, tacky red.

"Is there a problem, Akechi?"

He'd sounded impatient, annoyed, his voice always became more nasal when he was irritated.

He hated being ignored.

"No, not at all," he'd murmured, a weak smile frozen in place on his lips as he took the file offered without any further hesitation.

 _Plip. Plip._

Stupid, fucking sink.

Sometimes he thought about sneaking into the office in the early hours of the morning to fix the damn thing.

 _Plip. Plip._

He'd covered his unease by flicking the cover open and making a show of scanning the contents though the text might as well have been written in Aramaic for as well as he'd been able to decipher it.

Later he had discovered it was distressingly thin. Only a few points of interest and a location to go along with the name and a somewhat blurry personnel photo.

"Who is she?" He'd asked in the moment, because it was expected, not because he cared.

The anxious gnats fluttering in his belly were just the usual jitters he'd always had before he began work on a new case.

They were easy enough to ignore.

He'd had plenty of practice after all.

"Just some woman," he answered, his revolting smile slinking ever closer to a smirk. "Hardly even worth thinking about really, but she could cause me trouble down the line if we don't take care of her now."

 _Just some woman_.

Maybe they were all _just some woman_ to him.

Maybe they always had been.

Rage boils and bubbles and churns within him at the thought. It feels like it should be visible, like Shido should be able to see it leaking out of the cracks in smile, should be able to hear it like a scream of a tea kettle.

There's a gun in his briefcase.

In a hidden compartment beneath his school work.

It's the first and only gift he's ever received from that man.

Some nights he takes it out and sets it on the third-hand, well-used kotatsu he'd found and fixed up to get him through the worst of the winter's chill.

He doesn't keep it loaded.

Bullets aren't necessary in the cognitive world.

And in the real world... bullets are a dangerous temptation.

He was almost obsessive about cleaning it though he'd never needed to use it in the real world. Something about the ritual soothes his riotous soul.

 _Some woman._

There's no point in getting upset about something that doesn't matter.

And none of that matters.

What he wants, what he doesn't want.

What he _feels_.

He'd already made his decision.

And he had gone too far down that dark and winding path to entertain second thoughts or regrets now.

Sometimes he could still see the way blood pooled and swirled within the water puddled beneath the door, swirling dark across the surface like an invitation as it the it flowed towards him, turning the toes of his slippers pink.

 _Come and see._

Just some woman.

"I'll take care of it," he'd replied, smile never wavering as he snapped the file shut.

 **-ooo-**

The earliest return ticket he'd been able to purchase when he'd finally arrived at the station had been on the 8:23 to Shinagawa.

It was his own fault that he'd missed the earlier train, but it was still... vexing.

He'd had the beginnings of a headache since morning and the medicine he'd purchased at the drugstore on his way to the station had done precious little to alleviate it.

A situation that had not been helped by being recognized by a trio of teenage girls who had insisted on posing for a half dozen selfies with him before they'd finally gotten bored with his polite small talk and refusal to acknowledge their not-so-subtle overtures. Any other time he would have enjoyed the attention, maybe even flirted back a little, but the day's events and the sour taste of bile - that still lingered at the back of his throat despite the dozen breath mints he'd eaten since his stopover in the alley- spoiled what joy he might normally have gleaned from such an event. His smile -when he looked the photos up online later- seemed weak and forced. It was almost certainly going to start up another round of concerned theorizing about his work/life balance on the forums.

 _ **Overworked Detective Prince Spotted In Hamamatsu!**_

He'd have to be careful about keeping his curtains drawn for the next few weeks until speculation died down, with the extra scrutiny there was always the possibility of another stalking incident or, worse, some ambitious reporter looking for a scoop catching a glimpse of who he truly was.

He could do without the extra hassle.

"Might I sit here beside you?"

He glanced up to find a bent old woman with a hooked nose and a wide smile hovering over him.

He must have been more out of it than he'd realized since he hadn't even seen her approach.

"Oh, um, yes? Of course," he replied with a smile that he hoped didn't look half as much like a grimace as it felt like it did.

The girls from earlier were still lingering on the far side of the seating area and- if he were lucky- they might take and post a few more candid shots before they left.

Not really news worthy, but maybe just the presence of such pictures alongside the others would be enough to make the whole trip look utterly unremarkable.

He'd take no story at all over whatever story his sickly appearance in those damned selfies might inspire.

And if that meant he had to spend the next hour smiling and nodding his way through that old bat yammering on about her damn grandchildren, then so be it.

Of course, by the time his train actually arrived -twelve _excruciating_ minutes late- he'd been sincerely regretting that decision and seriously weighing how much damage shooting someone's doddering grandmother would really do to his carefully crafted image.

Not too much, surely.

He plastered on what he hoped was an apologetic smile as he gathered his case and coat, "I must apologize for cutting our conversation short, but I'm afraid that's my train. It has been a pleasure speaking with you. I do hope you have a truly wonderful visit with your family. Thank you again for keeping me company all this time."

He must have managed well enough as she was quick to return his smile with one of her own, "Oh, yes, yes, _of course_ , you just looked so lonely sitting here by yourself."

 _Lonely._

"Well, go on then, I wouldn't wish you to miss your train. Such a _kind_ boy, worrying about an old woman like me."

He laughed, light and high and polite and not the least bit hysterical, as if he were a little embarrassed by the praise and not at all thinking about accidentally stepping on her foot in his rush to catch his train.

 _Lonely._

How absurd.

He left her behind with a murmured thank you and another faint smile.

His head was throbbing, the light ache in his right temple that had persisted throughout the interminable day finally bursting into full blown pain as he stepped out into the light drizzle that peppered the platform and hurried onto the arriving train. He clutched his briefcase, grit his teeth and forced himself to focus on just getting a damn seat as he winced beneath the glare of the too-bright boarding lights.

By some miracle, he found an empty window-seat in the third car and planted himself in it, praying the old and infirm chose a different car to haunt so he wouldn't have to surrender the seat in service to his fucking _image_.

It would be nice if just one thing actually went his way today.

He turned to the window and the pale wash of his reflection barely visible against the brightly lit station outside. If he looked closely he was certain he'd be able to see the cracks in his expression, the imperfection of a smile worn too long and failing miserably around the edges.

Had she been able to tell?

Did he care?

His face _ached_.

It always did it seemed; no matter how long or how often he practiced the expression, it always made his face ache eventually. It was easier at school and work when he was expected to be serious and studious, when he could frown or look pensive without it being remarked upon or scrutinized. At least when he was using that stupid congenial smile at school or work there was something to be gained, this… this had just been pointlessly exhausting.

Much like the rest of his frustrating, disastrous day.

He didn't slump back into his seat, but it was a close thing. He closed his eyes and sighed, allowing himself a moment to relax before the train filled with people and he was forced back into his role once more.

All he truly wanted was to be back in his own apartment, his own private space.

Back to silence and the familiar shape of the water stains on the ceiling and the reek of burnt oil that drifted up from the izakaya below.

Back to his life, where a pile of homework and a dozen case files awaited him, hours of work to be done and school in the morning whether he liked it or not.

But at least, for a little while, he wouldn't have to smile for anyone but himself.

 **-ooo-**

He was standing in the aisle.

There was a little girl in a blue dress curled up in his seat, fast asleep.

The line of people behind him was growing increasingly impatient as he stared down at her, a rising anxiety growing within him with each passing moment.

The unrelenting certainty that if he didn't act soon, they would all know he was a fraud.

He could hear them behind him, grumbling, discontent.

He needed to _do_ something.

 _Anything._

He reached out toward her hesitantly.

To wake her?

Perhaps?

To ask her to move?

Possibly?

 _Something._

He was definitely going to do something.

He just hadn't quite settled on what that should be, he was still… undecided, unable to press forward or go back.

Stuck.

The train jostled around him, making the choice for him as it threw him off balance. He stumbled forward and his fingers brushed her sleeve. At the touch she shattered, burst into a thousand, brilliant blue and silver butterflies that flooded his vision and brushed against his skin.

He reeled back and his shoulders collided with his seat as something- someone- crashed into him, falling over him like a living blanket, warm and breathing and everywhere at once.

Panic seized him by the throat, shredding his composure to ribbons.

He was five and they were pulling him away from her, carrying him out of the house and no matter how he screams and kicks and twists and bites, they won't let him go and he _needs_ to go, he can't leave her there alone.

He _can't_.

He's sixteen and he's kicking free of the grasping hands of monsters, running, tripping, falling through a nightmare world he can't begin to understand.

He's seventeen and some asshole practically sitting on him and all he wants is to get _away._

"Get off," he snarled, shoving at their shoulders and chest to no avail.

How could anyway that skinny be so damned _heavy_?

It almost came as a surprise when the weight suddenly shifted and the person -boy, he realized belatedly- tumbled backwards into a sprawl at his feet.

He was still breathing too fast, his heart racing frantically in his chest, palms damp with sweat and head throbbing _again_.

All because some _shitty kid_ wasn't paying any attention to where he was fucking _going_.

"Sorry, I…." The boy began, finally looking up at him, his voice hesitant before trailing off into silence as if something he saw in his face made him reluctant to speak further.

He had big dark eyes and messy hair and he looked like he'd just rolled out of bed and onto the train.

And he was also trying very subtly to untangle himself from the backpack straps wrapped around his ankles.

He looked _ridiculous_.

The boy shifted restlessly beneath his gaze, grimacing, apparently completely oblivious to the salaryman who was squeezing in behind him to steal the seat he must have been sitting in before he'd fallen on him.

There was something weirdly satisfying about that.

Something that made him smile.

He was certain it wasn't a nice smile.

And that just wouldn't do.

"Are you all right?" He forced himself to ask. Not because he cared- he didn't- but because it was the sort of inquiry Akechi Goro, would-be Detective Prince, would have made.

After all, Akechi Goro was polite- a little awkward, yes- but always unfailingly _polite_.

"Yeah, sorry I fell on you," the boy clapped back, his tone as dry as the desert, as if he'd been able to tell how cursory and insincere his words and taken question as an insult instead of as a genuine inquiry.

He must have been more out of it then he thought if he was being seen through so easily by someone like _him_.

His surprise must have shown on his face, because the boy smirked up at him, snorting out a laugh that wasn't the least bit amused.

 **-ooo-**

Whenever he'd arrived at a new foster home, a new social worker would always come calling every few months to check on him, regular as clockwork.

His foster parents had always welcomed them warmly and served them cake and tea or sometimes coffee or just plain water. The flavor of the courtesies always varied from home to home, person to person. What never changed, however, was the way the social worker had always smiled at him over the rim of their cup, as if they were well-acquainted, as if they were old friends rather than complete strangers, and inquired: "Are you happy here, Goro-chan?"

He hated that question.

Hated how perfunctory and pointless it was.

Sometimes he wanted to tell them in excruciating detail what it felt like to be shuffled from place to place like the undesirable baggage he was.

What it was like to be unwanted, barely tolerated as a means to an end.

More often than not, he thought about showing the social worker the bruises on his back and telling them how his new parents had struck him.

Or showing them the cuts he'd made across the inside of his upper arms, his thighs and telling them they'd done it even though they hadn't.

He thought of dozens upon dozens of truths to tell them and hundreds of lies.

About adults with wandering hands.

About secrets and silence.

About how he thought about how he would kill them, each new smiling face, each new helping hand that tried to reach out to him.

How he wanted to hurt those who offered him kindness most of all, because at least the cruel ones were _honest_.

How he thought and planned and read books to figure out how he could make their deaths look like an accidents.

Detective novel after true crime novel after mystery novel and every book about forensic science and investigations and profiling he could get his hands on though he hadn't understood half the words and had had to look them up on the internet or in a dictionary at the bookstore.

So many books.

All useless.

Books couldn't tell him what he truly wanted to know.

Couldn't help him do what he really needed to do.

Years passed and he was shuffled from home to home to home and always there was someone who would come and ask him the same question.

Always that one _stupid_ question.

As if it _mattered_.

As if they _cared_.

 _Liars._

He could tell them about how often he thought about running away. About just vanishing into the night. Running off into the forest or the city with a pocketful of cheap jewelry and whatever cash he could lay his hands on.

About how he'd buy a train ticket to Tokyo and live on the streets or sell his body to perverts or whatever he needed to do in order to survive there.

That the only reason he hadn't was that he had no idea what he would do once he got there.

No hope of finding one lousy scumbag in the sea of sleaze that probably populated a city that had always seemed impossibly, hopelessly large.

He could have told them that he still dreamed about her almost every night.

About how sometimes he would cut too deep and just to watch the blood flow, how he'd let it soak the ground until it ran sluggish and slow enough to be stanched by a handful of tissues.

How kicking dirt over the stains left behind turning the earth a muddy burgundy in the aftermath.

How every time he passes a river he thought about jumping in and letting it carry him away, drag him under, leave his fat and bloated corpse on some far away beach.

He could have told them anything at all.

But then what?

What good would come of telling them any of that?

What would it buy him?

Another stint in a group home? Another school? Another family? More people to look at him with pity or disdain?

Therapy? _More_ therapy? A different sort of place to live with eyes on him around the clock and too much medicine and people constantly asking him how it made him _feel_?

His life already felt like a prison from which there was no escape, but at least here he could pretend he was free, pretend he had _choices_.

And so when the social worker asked whether he was happy he smiled the plastic smile he'd been practicing for so long and replied, "I have no complaints."

The lie was bitter and probably obvious, but they had always accepted his answer with a smile and a nod because that was what they wanted to hear. That was the easy answer. It was all anyone ever wanted to hear. That he was doing _well_ , that he was _fine,_ and- most importantly- that he wouldn't _complain_.

That everything was normal and there was no need for concern.

That he did not think about the bathroom or his mother or if he did that it was only ever in passing. Sadness there and then gone again, forgotten beneath the petty concerns of his school days. That he did not think about hurting himself, did not think about finding that man and hurting him like he hurt her, that he was a productive, good-natured child who'd gotten a raw deal and had risen above it to become someone… _virtuous_ and _good_.

They could like someone like that.

And forget him.

Pleasant, but unremarkable.

He always left the room quickly after answering, because if he didn't he might have said something else.

Lie or truth or something in between, but definitely something that would expose him for what he really was.

"He's a little odd," his foster parents had often lied as he left, "but he's a good boy."

Lies because he didn't cause them trouble and he got good grades and he stayed out of their way and they needed the extra income the government provided for his care.

Pretty lies for their own good, though they probably told themselves they were doing it for his benefit.

That was just the kind of people most of them were.

And he never let himself forget that.

Always lingered outside the kitchen to listen as they made frantic excuses for him and if he sometimes laughed, quiet and disgusted and just for himself, it was mostly because there'd never been any point in crying.

 **-ooo-**

He turned away only to find his seat occupied by that opportunistic salaryman who was very pointedly pretending as if his pointlessly expensive phone were the most vital thing in the world to avoid meeting the gaze of the teenager glaring down at him.

And he _laughed_ ;bitter and tight, shaking his head as if he should have never expected anything else.

Which was true.

Not that he _cared_.

And he _shouldn't_ care, after all it wasn't really any of his business.

The boy snorted out another bitter laugh as if he were so disgusted with the world he could barely stand to continue existing in it.

It was a feeling he knew very well.

He shouldn't interfere.

And _yet_.

And yet Akechi Goro wasn't the sort of person who allowed such an obvious injustice to go unanswered.

His couldn't very well forsake his image just because he had a bit of a headache.

It was the only reason he could think of for why he found himself reaching across the space the boy had just vacated to tap a finger pointedly against the salaryman's cellphone and offer him his most charming smile, "Pardon the intrusion, sir, but I believe this seat is taken."

The man glanced up at him, brow furrowed with irritation as if it had never occurred to him that he would be called out for his behavior.

It probably hadn't.

Entitled asshole.

He slipped his cellphone from his pocket and flicked a finger across the surface to open the camera function.

Men like that were all the same, ignorant and utterly confident in their power until the moment someone did not yield before them.

It always thrilled him to see the way they folded like a house of cards to an unexpected breeze the second things stopped going their way.

He was really looking forward to seeing that man do the same.

The flash was blindingly bright as he took the man's picture and he spared a moment to admire the shock apparent in his expression before slipping the phone back into his pocket, "There we are. I'll add this to my collection. What did you say your name was?"

"What do you think you're doing?" The man sputtered, indignation already crumbling beneath the force of nervous uncertainty.

 _No one_ liked having their picture taken by a stranger.

It was the simplest way to throw someone off their game.

"Oh, I apologize, perhaps I should have asked permission before taking your picture. I _do_ apologize, that was a terrible oversight on my part. I just can't seem to help myself when I witness such petty injustice. Pushing someone over in an attempt to steal their seat on the train? You really should be _ashamed_ of yourself."

The man was looking paler with each new word, each new calmly spoken accusation.

It felt good.

Better than he'd felt in a long time, if he were honest.

"As to the picture," he continued, pressing his advantage. "I like to document all my trips and I've just returned from Hamamatsu. Unfortunately, as I was there for personal reasons, I didn't really have much to write about for my case blog this time so- when I witnessed such crass behavior- I thought perhaps I might instead post about such an obvious lack of basic etiquette and human kindness. It's obviously not quite up to my usual standards as it pertains to case logs and crime fighting technique, but I think this sort of social commentary might play well with my audience nonetheless. Don't worry, I'll be sure to leave your name out of it, if you chose to give it to me. Though I'm afraid I _will_ need to post this picture to illustrate my point if you still refuse to return what you've so unfairly stolen."

He could almost hear it, the moment the man's resolve snapped, his will crumbling to pieces as he flushed with mortification. He was up and moving like a child fleeing a bully, pressing quickly past the boy, almost knocking him over in during his hasty retreat.

It might have made him laugh if he were the boy he'd been two years ago.

But he was not that boy.

He was somebody now and that person had a reputation to protect and an image to uphold.

And the Akechi Goro who solved crimes and sought justice was not petty enough to take pleasure in some salaryman's embarrassment.

Instead, he offered the boy a slim smile as he slipped back into his newly vacated seat and turned his gaze to the night outside, their business concluded.

The silence of that moment was a short-lived relief.

"Thanks for that," the boy offered, ignoring the dismissal as if he didn't recognize it for what it was. "And sorry again for falling on you like I did."

 _Dammit._

He'd hoped that would be the end of it.

Couldn't he take a _hint?_

"Ah, yes," he replied, scrambling for a response that fit his image. For something, anything, more suitable that the bitchy _'fuck off'_ that was floating through his mind on a cloud fashioned from a rude gesture and a dozen more equally rude remarks. "Well, you startled me and I was… less than gracious."

He shrugged helplessly.

It was, of course, the understatement of the century.

He was still mortified even thinking of how poorly he'd reacted, how his facade had crumpled like cheap tin beneath the weight of one clumsy boy.

"It was the least I could do," he murmured at last, managing a small wobbly smile that should have been enough to put his image to rights or win him a gold-plated statue of some sort.

Which did not in any way explain why that boy was still squinting at him as if he had mustard on his cheek.

It was irritating.

 _He_ was _irritating_.

Why the fuck hadn't he just let that asshole have his seat?

He was absolutely certain that the shitty salaryman wouldn't have been trying nearly as hard to ruin his already colossally terrible day.

"Have you ever seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers?" He asked suddenly, the question bursting out of him like a jack springing from a box and just as welcome.

"I- what?"

What the _hell_ was he even talking about?

What the hell was Invasion of the Body Snatchers?

As if reading his mind, the boy was quick to answer though none of the words he said actually helped.

"The movie? Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Not the shitty remake or even the pretty good remake, but the original one. The Don Siegel one? Have you seen it?"

He said it all in an excited rush, so much so that it almost sounded like another language.

"No, I don't…" he began, grimacing.

How was he meant to take that?

It was just so... _random_.

He was used to people trying to engage him on subjects he didn't necessarily know anything about. Adults were constantly trying to trip him up in order to show him up, to bolster their own egos. He was used to it. He knew how to bluff his way through those situations. Made it a point to stay up to date on popular culture, restaurants, politics. He studied constantly, obsessively, so his practical knowledge of most subjects was well ahead of that of his peers.

But this?

This weird, random, bizarre enthusiasm for a _movie_?

What the hell was he supposed to do with this?

Was it a trick? A trap?

Or was he really just some sort of weird otaku?

" _Why_ are you asking?" He inquired finally when the boy didn't immediately volunteer a further explanation, the beginnings of frustration straining his tone, gloved fingers curling against his knees.

The boy shrugged amiably and slumped down in his chair, a slow smile curving his lips, "You just made me think of it."

You just made me _think of it?_

What the _fuck_ was that supposed to mean?

Something about it- the way he smiled or the way he shrugged or the way he slumped so carelessly in his seat or maybe just the words themselves- grated against his nerves like nails dragged down the length of a chalkboard.

"What." The leather of his gloves creaked as he clenched his fingers, as he spat the word out from behind clenched teeth.

Fuck.

What was it about this stupid kid that made it so hard to control himself?

He forced himself to draw a breath, to relax, but it was difficult, painfully so.

"I'm sorry," he managed with difficulty, offering him a smile he didn't feel that he was certain didn't look anything even close to real. "I don't believe I caught your name?"

"Tell me yours and I'll tell you mine," the boy replied immediately with a smug, self-satisfied smirk that played across his lips like it was the only song he knew.

That little _shit._

He wanted to reach across the space between them and wrap his fingers around his throat, listen to the leather of his gloves creak as he squeezed.

It was an incredibly _gratifying_ mental image.

Especially when the asshole proceeded to make a great show of pushing his sleeves up over his elbows, of turning his hands over and spreading his fingers wide, palms up.

Nothing up my sleeves, the gesture taunted, carelessly.

 _Careless._

And why not?

For all that he knew he was simply teasing some random boy on a train?

Someone who'd been a little rude to him and probably deserved a childish taunt or two, in his mind.

And here he was, like an idiot, letting himself get worked up about nothing.

He had absolutely no _idea_ who he was fucking with.

No clue who he really was or what he'd done.

He was just a _kid_.

Just a stupid kid.

And, even knowing that, it still took everything he had not to throttle the little shit where he sat on general principle.

"Why?" He asked, trying for curious and nonchalant and crashing and burning before they even leave his mouth.

"I don't have any friends," the boy admitted without even the faintest hint of embarrassment. "And I wouldn't mind making one."

He could not possibly be serious, but the admission brought an unwanted smile to his lips anyway.

"I can't say I'm surprised you have no friends. You don't seem a very pleasant person."

"I suppose not," the boy shrugged, as if that didn't matter at all. "Of course, neither do you."

He didn't laugh, but it was a close thing, "I have no idea what you're talking about. I am an _incredibly_ pleasant person."

It was a lie, of course, but it was a lie no one else had ever seen through.

Easy to tell and easy to believe.

The very best kind of lie.

Except he wasn't even sure the boy across from him was even listening to him anymore.

He was too busy staring at his mouth like he was contemplating whether he might be able to fit inside.

Which... was... not what he'd expected.

It was weird.

And maybe almost, a little bit flattering.

Had anyone ever looked at him that way before?

Girls, certainly.

He had a lot of fans who left him chocolate in his locker and love letters that required polite refusals.

Still... this didn't feel like that.

Maybe it was just because he'd never cared how any of those people looked at him.

Not that he cared how this boy looked at him either, of course.

He didn't.

But it wasn't... awful.

It was almost like a physical touch, that look, so intent that he could almost feel it like a thumb pressed against his bottom lip, tracing the shape of it before slipping inside to tap askance against his teeth.

It's far more tempting than it should be.

He'd never had a playmate, even as a child, even before his mother had died and the whole world had changed, even then he'd always been a solitary child.

Not lonely- never _lonely-_ but often alone.

"That's a shame," his companion sighed, eyes drooping as he slumped down further in his chair. "I think the asshole who was ready to toss me off the train for falling on him was way more interesting."

He didn't have a reply for that and his too chatty companion didn't seem to expect one as he shifted about in chair trying to get comfortable. It seemed to take no time at all before he'd nudged his face in against the cool of the window and fallen asleep almost instantly..

He wasn't sure what to think of that. Whether to find that ability to fall asleep so easily in the company of strangers foolhardy or enviable.

He slept with his mouth open.

And he _snored_.

It was _uniquely_ unattractive.

He laughed a little under his breath as he drew his phone from his pocket and snapped a quick picture. He'd never had a use for all the silly, childish little features in the photo app before so it took a little while to figure out how to draw on the photo, to give the sleeping boy a set of devil horns, a goatee and a curling mustache before saving the image as his wallpaper.

He could use a good laugh from time to time.

Eventually he gave into temptation and opened his browser.

 _Invasion of the Body Snatchers._

It wasn't difficult to find the version he'd spoken of. To find summaries and critical reviews and even a few clips he could watch play out in silence, volume muted to avoid bothering the other passengers.

 _…replaced by emotionless imposters…_

He'd never thought of himself that way.

 _Emotionless._

It seemed as if his life would much simpler if he were.

He doubted that was what he'd meant anyway.

He frowned and slipped his phone back into his pocket once more.

If he wanted to sate his curiosity, he would need to gather further information as what he knew so far was clearly insufficient.

Unfortunately the only source of information was still sleeping, body loose and limp across the seat.

His hair was frizzy, made so no doubt, by the drying damp and an uneven cut. It made him look different now that the intensity of his gaze was shuttered by sleep; younger… weaker. Like this he didn't seem a presence worthy of remark. If he looked at him too long like this, he might not even remember why he'd considered him a threat at all.

Not that he really had.

He was just a boy, after all.

A boy like any other, just another spoiled child who'd spoken too much and too abruptly about things he couldn't hope to understand.

Looking at him now, it all seemed... silly.

He didn't know him, didn't know anything about him at all.

No one did.

Not really.

He'd chosen his mask wisely and he wore it well.

The realization should have brought relief.

It didn't.

The old woman beside him shifted in her sleep, her snores getting louder for a moment before settling to near silence once more.

 _Huh._

 _Strange._

He was usually so conscious of his surroundings, of the people in them, but he couldn't remember giving her or any of the other passengers in their row more than a passing thought since the moment he'd been so rudely woken.

It was a potentially life-ruining oversight and he couldn't even summon up token embarrassment over it..

What the hell was _wrong_ with him today?

To be so easily distracted.

So far off his game.

 _Ridiculous._

No one was looking at them, sleeping or caught up in their own affairs, the quiet bleep of cell phones, the rustle of newspapers and the occasional cough the only sounds that broke the silence.

He glanced back at the boy still sleeping against the window.

He must have never known hardship in his life to be able to sleep so soundly in such a public place. Never known fear or the sinister promise of a stranger'a hands.

Such innocence.

Such foolish complacency.

Such misplaced trust.

It made him want to ruin it.

Ruin him.

He fumbled a glove off before he could think better of it, before he could think at all of what he intended.

That dark hair was very soft beneath the light press of his fingertips and he had a brief mad desire to push his hand against it, to catch hold and coil those untidy waves around his fingers.

To tear it out or just use it to drag him from his seat and down into the darkness of the world beneath.

Into the cognitive world where he could press him against pulsing walls or pin him against oil slick floors, where he could rip his mask away and let him look his fill. Let him see him for what he truly was. See the fear in his eyes, the confusion, the revulsion and then release him back into the world a ranting, mad thing, spoiled and stained by truth.

He jolted back abruptly shaking the image from his head and clutching the offending hand back against his chest, panting as his heart leapt to a gallop in his chest.

Stupid, stupid, _stupid_.

He sent a furtive glance down the row, but no one seemed to be have been paying him even the least bit of attention.

Here he was not the famous boy detective.

Here he was just another teenager, just another face in a crowd, no one cared who he was or where he was going..

He glanced out the window, at the water streaking across the surface, at the fields beyond and the city lights in the distance.

From such a distance, on such a night, Tokyo seemed like a distant planet, mysterious and strange and not the least bit inviting.

He pulled his glove back on with trembling hands, fingertips still tingling with the memory of touch.

 _Foolish._

What was he doing?

Perhaps it had not been so foolish to consider him a threat after all.

Even if not in the more conventional manner.

He leaned his head against the window, the cool of the glass felt nice against the heat in his face.

Perhaps, perhaps, _perhaps_.

It seemed that he must have slept for a time, but if he dreamed he remembered nothing of it upon waking, only darkness and silence as if he'd closed his eyes for only the space of a breath, but when he opened them again the lights seemed far closer than they had been and his face felt cold and smooth where it had been pressed against the glass.

His companion was still sleeping, mouth open, glasses slightly askew, face squashed against the window.

Their feet had tangled together as they slept, supple leather pressing in against sneakers so worn the canvas was riddled with holes that showed the dark of mismatched socks beneath.

His t-shirt was ratty, his blazer faded, his jeans were worn and the backpack jammed behind his feet was a dark, misshapen bulge that reminded him of those hulking, beastly monsters that lurched through the pulsing darkness that existed beneath Shibuya.

There was nothing about the image he presented that explained the queasy squirm of heat in his belly.

 _Nothing._

"Next station: Shin-Yokohama."

The time had gone by both too fast and too slow and soon they'd arrive in Shinagawa.

He could let him continue to sleep.

Could disembark and switch trains and never see or speak to him again.

But if he did, he might still think of him sometimes, late at night, when sleep was elusive and the silence of his apartment became too much to bear as it sometimes did.

He might keep the photo.

He might think about how soft his hair had been or about the way his foot had hooked back behind a stranger's ankle while he slept as if he wished to keep him close.

If he were desperate enough- _pathetic_ enough-he might even consider what might have happened if he _had_ woken him.

Might stare into the dark and run down a thousand rabbit holes in his mind chasing a hundred thousand maybes and might have beens.

It would be a distraction.

One he could ill afford.

It only made sense that he should wake him.

Wake him now so he might never have cause to think of him again.

Surely he'd only _seemed_ interesting.

And no one was what they seemed to be.

 _No one._

A fact he should know better than anyone.

He had fashioned himself from lies and deceit into something that could be respected and embraced and needed and loved.

For all the good it had done him.

He carefully shifted his feet away, pulling them free and back against his own seat before painting over the grimace he wore with an apologetic smile, cheap and perfunctory as a participation award.

Akechi Goro was a good Samaritan.

Helpful and generous and kind to strangers.

It would be rude to let this stranger continue to sleep and potentially miss his stop.

And that was as good a reason as any to rouse him and sate his curiosity in what little time remained.

He curled the fingers of one gloved hand around his wrist and gave it a gentle squeeze and- for just a moment- the temptation was there, a sinister hiss like a gas leak at the back of his brain urging him to tighten his grip, to _squeeze_ until bone fractured and then shattered beneath his fingers, until the boy before him began to sob, to scream, to…

 _Stop._

 _Stop it._

There was no need to harm him.

There was nothing to be gained from it in the here and now.

Maybe later.

But not yet.

He forced himself to breathe, slowly, carefully, as he counted down from ten.

It didn't really help.

Nothing did.

He kept breathing, slowly, counting down again and again as he turned his gaze to the window once more.

Outside the brilliant lights of the city seemed so close now that he could almost reach out and touch them.

The train slowed to a stop, announcing their arrival at Shin-Yokohama which he assumed it must have been though the station looked like nothing so much as a poorly rendered blur through the rain-smeared glass.

They pulled away from the station as he continued to stare at his reflection, trying not to notice that the eyes that stared back at him were as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars.

"Next station: Shinagawa."

It was now or never and he still felt nowhere even close to prepared.

Fortunately, he had had plenty of practice maintaining his smile when he felt like doing anything but.

He drew a final deep breath and blew it out slowly before turning back to face him.

He still looked ridiculous.

So, at least there was that.

"You should wake up," he commented, giving the wrist in his grasp another gentle squeeze, pleased to find that his voice sounded as soft and pleasant as ever with not even the suggestion of a quaver. "We'll be arriving in Tokyo soon."

His companion blinked his eyes open immediately as if he'd just been waiting for someone to call out to him. Something about his glasses made his eyes seem unnaturally large, like an owl's. With eyes like those it seemed that he should be able to see _everything_ there was to see, from the false cheer of his smile to the traces of blood that probably lingered on his hands, hidden away though they were beneath the thin coating of civility his gloves provided and he stared at him dumbly for a long moment before shifting in his seat uncomfortably.

He released him and sat back, not quite able to bring himself to look away as he took his sweet time working his neck and arms free of whatever kinks sleep had branded into his muscles before leaning over to fish a water bottle from his stupid bag and take a drink.

Every move he made felt maddeningly, purposefully slow, as if it were designed to annoy him.

It was only once he had put his water bottle away and tucked the bag back behind his feet once more that he finally, _finally_ deigned to raise his gaze to meet his scrutiny once more.

"Thanks for waking me," he murmured, offering him a small smile before turning to stare out the window.

Soft, sincere, a little uncertain and almost _painfully_ real.

Only it _wasn't_.

Because no one was _ever_ what they seemed to be.

 _Ever._

He _knew_ that.

And yet there he sat, like a fool, feeling as if he'd missed a step in the dark and barely caught himself on the verge of falling because of a _smile_.

"I have seen it," he blurted out, louder than he'd intended, sudden and abrupt and awkward and nothing like how he'd wanted to say it, how he'd intended to work it into the conversation.

Mainly because there _was_ no conversation.

He'd meant to be subtle or at least not so... _fuck_.

What was _wrong_ with him?

Why was he _constantly_ embarrassing himself in front of this one _stupid_ boy?

And the way he was looking back at him, expression shocked open, like he'd slapped him, heavy with confusion as if he hadn't the least idea what he was even _talking_ about, made it that much _worse_. Made him feel like a fool for bringing it up at all. Made him to snatch the words back, wind back time and never say anything at all, just go back to watching, wondering, while he slept on, oblivious.

But that chance was gone and all he could do was cover his embarrassment with a smile and offer an explanation, mortifying as it was to do so, "The movie you mentioned, I have seen it."

"Have you?"

"Yes," he replied, clearing his throat, because he was _many_ things, but he'd never been a quitter. "It's about people being replaced by emotionless versions of themselves, right?"

He knew it was.

He'd watched a handful of clips and scanned a half-dozen articles to be _absolutely certain_ he had the right of it.

His lips quirked, head falling to the side, eyes crinkling at the edges, "Are you sure you didn't just look it up on your phone to make sure I wasn't insulting you?"

 _Dammit._

It should have upset him to be seen through so easily, to be seen through so thoroughly.

It should have, but it didn't.

Instead it made his stomach wobble uncomfortably.

"Of course not," he scoffed, heart pounding so hard he could barely hear himself speak. "Why in the world would I do something like _that_?".

And he was smiling at him again.

That slim, sly, secret smile that made it feel like they were doing something dangerous, something illicit, something they shouldn't be doing at all, "Sorry, you're right. I was trying to make a joke. Obviously my sense of humor needs work. So, do you like it?"

"Oh, I, um," he began uncertainly, his voice shoring up as he committed to the lie. He could do this. He'd done this so many times before. "That is, I don't remember it very well. I was quite small when I saw it, you see."

"Were you?" He replied, smiling still.

"Quite. Why did you ask me if I'd seen it?"

"Maybe I was just making conversation," he commented, still smiling.

"It didn't seem like an idle question."

"So, you like science fiction?"

"Not particularly. I don't have very much time for such frivolous diversions these days. I suppose I liked it well enough when I was young."

"What'd you like?"

He was six or seven curled up on their old couch, wrapped in a quilt, watching television while he waited for her to come home from work.

She'd gotten him a Godzilla toy and made him pancakes for his birthday that year.

There'd been shadows under her eyes that deepened when she smiled.

He still had the toy.

He'd taken it to school that day and it had still been in his backpack as he'd sat in the police station that night.

It had lost an arm somewhere along the way, but he still kept it on a shelf near his bed.

"Godzilla, mostly," he answered, because sometimes a little bit of truth made the lies go down easier.

"Me too. Which was your favorite?"

"The original, I suppose."

He didn't want to talk about this.

Should have told him something else.

Anything else.

"See, I always liked Mothra vs. Godzilla best."

"I haven't seen that one," he lied.

He'd seen all of them.

Even the new ones that seemed like a different breed altogether, vaguely dissatisfying, like watching a cover band perform your favorite songs just a touch off-key.

Sometimes he'd gone to see retrospectives at a run down movie house in Shinjuku late at night. He'd seen the newer ones there as well though he'd stopped going after a few of his fans had spotted him there and posted about it online. Cheesy science-fiction didn't really fit with the image he was trying to maintain and, to add insult to injury, they'd insisted on sitting near him, giggling and talking in hushed voices throughout.

He hadn't been back since.

It was just as well.

He wasn't certain why he'd ever really liked them in the first place.

"That's too bad," the boy commented, oblivious to his thoughts. "It's really good. School keep you busy?"

"Quite," he replied, relieved to be back on more familiar ground. "I also have a job that takes up much of my limited free time."

"Isn't that kind of frowned upon?"

"My school doesn't have any rules prohibiting it."

"And your parents?"

His expression feels frozen, wooden, "That's never been an issue for me."

It's not as if he isn't used to talking about his lack of family, it's come up plenty of times during morning show interviews and background pieces. It's a matter of public record and one he's made a point of using to his advantage.

He was well used to people looking at him with pity, sympathy, accustomed to putting on a good face. He's spoken of it so many times, he could likely recite the story in his sleep.

Talking about it didn't bother him anymore, if it ever had at all.

It's almost disconcerting when he doesn't ask, instead just nodding and plowing ahead, taking his answer at face value without asking for further detail.

"What do you do?"

"Would you like to guess?" He asked, strangely relieved.

"Stunt driver," he answered immediately.

The unlikely guess startled a laugh from him before he can catch it back, "What about me makes you think that?"

"That a no?"

It wasn't really that funny, but he couldn't seem to stop laughing about it, relaxing back into his chair in spite of himself, "No, not a stunt driver."

"Day care attendant?"

"No, I'm actually terrible with children."

"Are you?"

"Don't believe me?"

"I haven't decided yet. So that's a 'no' to day care attendant?"

"I'm afraid so."

It wasn't as if he was _enjoying_ himself.

"IT specialist?"

"I'm decent with computers, but I'd hardly call myself a specialist."

"Ghost writer?"

"What would I write?"

It wasn't as if he was having _fun_.

"Self-help?"

"Absolutely not. I'm a mess."

"Science fiction? Cookbooks?"

"I suppose I might enjoy the first, but I'd be hopeless at the second."

"Don't cook?"

"Not really, most of my meals come from the convenience store, I'm afraid."

His budget was tight at the best of times. Living in Shibuya on his own was expensive. Just his rent alone was almost more than he could afford, but he still splurged on all those fancy little restaurants to keep up appearances, to have something to talk about, a way to relate and make himself more approachable. Still, there were plenty of times when his schedule and budget didn't allow for that sort of thing at all.

The boy was smiling at him again and it was doing uncomfortable things to his stomach.

"Mine too," he commented. "Though cup noodles have been known to put in an appearance from time to time."

She had always made them seem special, like a treat.

Serving them in fancy bowls and layering in extra ingredients.

He'd tried to eat them since, but they weren't the same even when he was certain he'd added all the same things she had.

Something of his thoughts must have been obvious on his face, because he was looking at him funny again, lips quirking in a strange little half-smile.

"Not a fan?"

"No," he answered shortly.

The boy shrugged amiably, "Your loss."

"You cannot possibly tell me you enjoy them. They taste like cardboard despair."

"Only if you don't season them properly."

"Or possibly you just enjoy the taste of cardboard."

"Or despair, hard to say really."

"I suppose that's true," he conceded, grasping frantically for a change of subject. "I'm not a ghost writer, by the way."

He smiled at that, tilting his head to lean against the window once more, "I can't imagine you behind a counter."

"Really? My manners are impeccable. I think I'd be well-suited for work as a clerk if I had the urge."

He'd worked hard on that.

Stolen books from the little bookstore around the corner from the house he'd lived in before he came to Tokyo. He'd stayed up late practicing his smile in the mirror, whispering greetings and working on his pronunciation, before trying it out at school. He'd worked hard to fit in seamlessly, to become the respectable individual he was now.

It had been years since he'd been the strange, sullen boy with no friends.

He'd worked hard to leave that boy behind, to bury him in a shallow grave in that little town by the sea.

"Really? I'm pretty sure you'd kill someone the first time they spilled something and you had to clear up their mess."

It took everything he had to keep his smile in place, to keep his voice steady, "Do I?"

"Yeah, you really do," he answered, his voice soft, almost solemn.

He snorted a laugh as he turned his gaze to the window once more, letting his hair fall to obscure his expression.

He didn't trust himself.

Didn't trust what his face might betray of his thoughts.

Every time he said something like that it felt as if he were chipping away at his mask, prying pieces off and casting them aside, leaving what lay beneath aching and raw and _exposed_.

Was he doing it on purpose?

Was he trying to ruin him?

He couldn't quite bring himself to believe that was true, but he didn't believe in coincidence either.

"You asked my name before," he began slowly, hesitantly, uncertain whether he actually wanted an answer to the question he was about to ask. "You don't know who I am?"

He couldn't quite bring himself to look at him, to see lies chase shadows across his expression.

"Should I? Are you famous or something?" He scoffed, just the faintest hint of laughter in his voice, as if the idea were completely absurd.

And maybe to him it was.

Maybe to him even the possibility of his being anyone of note were so painstakingly remote that he could barely manage to issue the comment with a straight face.

He wasn't certain what that said about him.

"Something like that," he choked out in response, feeling vaguely ill.

"That's okay," the boy commented, his voice soft and distant, almost sad. "Happens to the best of us,"

He glanced over at him out of the corner of his eye and found him staring out at the distant horizon, all but invisible beyond the city that had sprung up around them.

And he found himself wondering, not for the first time: Who _are_ you?

Though he couldn't quite bring himself to ask.

Wasn't even certain that he truly wished to know.

 **-ooo-**

 **ADDITIONAL NOTES:**

I have many, many ridiculous theories about Akechi which have little to no basis in canon (mostly because canon deals with him pretty sparingly all things considered). Many of these theories are mentioned in passing here and will be explored more later on. That said, I am very fond of the idea that Akechi spent part of his childhood in Inaba, because if Atlus is going to play the 'Persona 4 and 5 totally occur in the same reality' game then I have absolutely no problem taking that thought to the next obvious conclusion.

Also worth noting, Akechi doesn't refer to the Metaverse as the Metaverse because that is Morgana's terminology.

I also (obviously) roll with the headcanon that Akechi's inner monologue just gets bitchier and more foul-mouthed the more tired and cranky he is.

 **Bullets in the Cognitive World:** So, I have this theory that bullets are only actually necessary in the cognitive world because they _think_ bullets are necessary and all their knowledge of the cognitive world is based on what Morgana tells them (and to a lesser extent what Akira gleans from the Velvet Room). Because the idea of your gun generating a finite amount of fake bullets is ridiculous. Because, from a world-building standpoint, if they were actually using pellets as their fake bullets that would mean they'd have to reload them each time they left the cognitive world and there would be absolutely no compelling reason they couldn't just carry extra pellets to reload on the fly in the same pockets they stick their infinite supply of freaking coffee. So, basically, I'm just assuming they're just going off what Morgana told them and Morgana, in this instance, was incorrect. As to Akechi, he's probably gained most of his knowledge through a combination of Wakaba's research and his own trial and error so he wouldn't be constrained by the same limitations as the others. That said, in this scenario, when it becomes obvious to Akechi that they think there's a hard limit on bullets he just plays along.

The briefcase book- quotes from which are referenced at several points throughout this chapter in Akechi's thoughts- is iThe Long Goodbye/i by Raymond Chandler.


	3. An Honest Adversary: Break the Door Down

_"He turned and walked across the floor and out. I watched the door close. I listened to his steps going away down the imitation marble corridor. After a while they got faint, then they got silent. I kept on listening anyway."_  
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

 **-ooo-**

The first year he'd been shuffled from one home to the next every few months.

Five different families in five different houses in five different towns, but always the same ending every time.

"It just wasn't a good fit."

And always the nebulous implication that next time... _next time_.

Only next time had only ever been another variation of last time and the story always ended the same way.

It hadn't taken him long to realize that he was the problem.

That he was the damp puzzle piece, swollen and bloated and no longer able to fit in any slot made available for him.

He was still Akechi Goro, but the name didn't mean anything anymore.

Once he'd been her son and now he was no one and he belonged nowhere.

He was small and quiet and odd.

He didn't want to be held.

He didn't even want to be _touched_.

And every time a hand clapped down against his shoulder or pressed against his back, he wanted to smack it away, but he didn't.

After the first move, he'd begged to be given uniform shirts a size too big, long enough that he could pull his fingers into a fist and they would disappear into his sleeves as he walked down the halls.

Other kids whispered about him behind their hands as he sat in sullen silence in whatever empty seat had been available for him to take the day he arrived.

He spent most of his days with his nose buried in a book and no one ever spoke _to_ him, just _about_ him, and he told himself that he didn't _care_.

And he didn't.

He sat by himself and he went home by himself and everything was just how he wanted it to be.

 **-ooo-**

He could have let the silence between them linger.

If he could have just let it go at that, it was perfectly possible that they might not have spoken again at all.

The silence between them wasn't uncomfortable and it would have been pleasant enough to just let it linger until it was time for one of them to disembark. He could have made his apologies, quiet and a little awkward, but polite all the same, just shy of memorable, and parted ways never to see or hear from one another again.

And yet... and yet.

He didn't want it to end.

Not yet.

Not while it still felt half-finished and incomplete.

It had been so long since he had felt anything real. Anything beyond hate and guilt and fear and rage. So long since he'd felt… normal that the concept seemed like a distant dream made of moonbeams and stardust.

It was a distraction, yes, but it was one he could afford.

If only for this one moment, brief and transitory and meaningless as it was, he wanted to just _be_.

"Was that really the best you could do?"

The boy in the tattered jacket startled, shaking himself from his thoughts, obviously flustered as he glanced back at him, owlish eyes wide with surprise, "Huh?"

It felt good to be able to surprise him.

"You were guessing what I do for work," he reminded him, gently, trying and no doubt failing in the attempt to offer a commiserating smile that might coax him back into the game.

Game.

 _Fuck._

What was he even _doing_?

He should have just kept his mouth shut.

Should have just let it _go_.

He was always like this, taking things just a step too far, trying for more rather than settling for less.

He should really have known better by now.

 **-ooo-**

When he was eight, he'd stopped at a park on his way home. He knew he wasn't supposed to, but that hadn't seemed to matter so much. He'd sat by himself, tucked behind some overgrown bushes at the base of a tree. There were squirrels in the tree and he watched them go about their business for a long time, throwing themselves from branch to branch with reckless abandon. Eventually it had gotten dark and he couldn't see them anymore, though he could still hear their claws skittering over the tree bark.

They'd been frantic when he'd finally arrived home. They'd called the police, they said, they hadn't known what else to _do_.

They'd been so _worried_.

They'd been so _frightened_.

"Where have you _been_ , Goro-chan? Did someone hurt you? Did you get lost?"

It had made him feel _good_ ; better than he'd felt in a really long time though it made his face feel too warm and his eyes burn.

They'd held him as he sobbed.

It was nice.

He told them he'd just taken a wrong turn, gotten lost. He'd promised to do better.

They'd been so _relieved_.

That night he'd gone to sleep and he hadn't dreamed about water or red hands and he'd woken the next morning and they'd been nice.

They'd fixed him breakfast and taken him to school in the car, come and picked him up after.

It was nice.

It hadn't lasted.

The next time he'd walked home and stopped at the park, they weren't as frantic when he finally arrived home and he could tell they didn't really believe him when he said he'd gotten lost again.

The time after that, they'd just been angry for the inconvenience.

They asked him where he'd been and he told them about the park, but they didn't believe him.

It hadn't really come as a surprise when the social worker had been the one to pick him up from school a few weeks later.

He'd stared out the window as they drove to a new town, a new life.

The sky had seemed very blue.

 **-ooo-**

And he did, of course, know better, but he spent so much energy denying himself that it felt good to indulge once in a while even if it were in something as silly as a simple, somewhat childish, guessing game.

It was a harmless enough diversion.

After the briefest hesitation, his opponent's lips quirked as if he were fighting a smile and he replied: "Law enforcement."

And just like that he was on his heels once more, frozen like a hare spying a predator through the brush.

Every instinct screaming danger, caution, turn back.

What had given him away?

Had he said something?

It felt like a violation. As if he'd simply reached out and stolen the truth from his head.

Or perhaps he had known from the start and he had been a fool for not realizing he'd been recognized, lied to.

No, that wasn't it.

He knew a liar when he saw one.

He saw one every day looking back at him from every mirror and windowpane, after all.

"Do you think so?" He asked, forcing his muscles to unclench as he relaxed painfully slowly back into his seat. He was the one who had asked for this, after all, it would feel hopelessly pathetic if he were to back down now just because his opponent had managed to score a lucky point. "I assure you, I'm a perfectly normal high school student."

Play the game.

He just had to play the game.

He removed his gloves slowly, placing them neatly in his lap. He shrugged out of his jacket and unbuttoned his sleeves, rolling them carefully up his forearms before spreading his hands out between them in an echo of the gesture the he'd used earlier.

The gesture was greeted with a smile that made his stomach swoop and dive.

 _Dangerous._

Every breath felt dangerous.

His opponent slouched back in his chair, as if that gesture alone had been enough to cut the tension that had held him taunt, "So, all that about case blogs and crime fighting techniques was just a bluff?"

Ah, of course, he'd almost forgotten about that. The exchange with that dark-suited salaryman seemed so distant now, so far removed and unimportant that he could barely remember the man's face at all much less the entirety of their brief conversation.

"Oh, that… well, what do you think? Truth or Lie?"

"Truth," he replied easily. "You keep a crime fighting blog?"

"Do I seem the sort?"

"Yeah, you kind of do."

"Well, I can assure you that I'm not an undercover police officer, if that's what you're thinking."

"It wasn't."

"What then?"

"I don't know," he answered, seemingly unbothered by the admission of ignorance. "But that guy didn't seem to doubt you at all which meant he probably knew who you were."

He conceded the point with a smile, "But you don't so I can't possibly be as well-known as I thought."

"Maybe," he shrugged and there was something so practiced about the motion that it made his words feel false somehow. "I don't get out much."

What did that mean? Nothing about his demeanor seemed to speak to him being an introvert much less a shut-in and it didn't feel quite like a lie, more as if he were obscuring the truth in some way.

It was... interesting.

 _He_ was interesting.

"Don't you? Interesting," he commented, though he doubted his opponent would fall for such an obvious feint.

"It really isn't."

There was something about the way he said it. Bitter. Practically dripping with the residuals of an anger that was banked and dull, a path well-trodden. As if the truth were something he had long ago resigned himself to, but been unable to fully dismiss from his mind.

A prisoner.

He had been a prisoner of some sort.

That much was suddenly, glaringly, obvious.

"Justice," he blurted the word out, startling him again.

"What?"

"You asked for a name," he replied, gesturing fruitlessly to the air between them. It was strange to feel the flow of air against his fingertips. He so rarely took the gloves off these days, wasn't even quite certain why he'd decided to do so now.

The prisoner snorted, leaning back in his chair, "Funny, you don't look like a Justice."

"Don't I?"

Perhaps he didn't. Sometimes his justice was ink black, screaming madness in the dark. Sometimes it was the brilliant white of the righteous man. Sometimes it felt like his justice might tear the world apart and burn it to ash and him along with it.

"Justice isn't nearly as pretty as you," he answered finally and it felt honest in a way few things truly were.

The urge to bury his fingers in that soft hair once more, to tug him close, to breath the echo of those words into his chest to feel the shape of them against his skin, was almost overwhelming.

He laughed and it felt vaguely hysterical, "That's a particularly jaded take on it."

"It's been a challenging year," he replied, smiling. "What's your excuse?"

It was a kind smile.

Tired, but kind.

He kind of wanted to slap that face so he would stop looking at him that way.

"It's the only thing I believe in," he replied instead, tit for tat, honest answer for honest answer.

"And you call me jaded."

"I suppose it takes one to know one, doesn't it?"

"I suppose it does."

"You can call me Joker," he offered, staring at him expectantly as he pressed his glasses to perch higher across the bridge of his nose though they didn't truly need the nudge.

He felt like there's some humor in there that he wasn't quite able to parse, a joke he couldn't hope to understand.

"Why Joker?"

"Makes about as much sense as Justice," he countered, shrugging.

It felt like he was making fun of him or perhaps of them both.

Not that it mattered.

"I suppose that's true," he replied, the admission tasted bitter on his tongue. He dug his nails into his palms and hoped the smile he offered along with those words read as something approaching genuine.

He hated feeling like this.

Anxious.

It felt as if he had missed some obvious clue or inadvertently stumbled into a trap of his own making, as if he were overlooking something that should have been painfully obvious.

"Tell me three things about yourself," the boy who called himself Joker demanded suddenly, jarring him from his thoughts as he leaned forward into the space between them once more, his eyes sparkling with mischief.

"Just three?" He replied, chuckling a little.

It wasn't as difficult as it might have been.

The choice of three seemed so absurdly arbitrary.

"That's the game," he answered, smiling easily. "Three things. Two lies, one truth."

He should say no. He had work he could be doing, homework to catch up on, case files to go through, a dozen more important issues that required his attention and yet, just like before, he couldn't quite bring himself to put an end to this unexpected game.

To be the one to concede.

"Ah, I see, and then you would do the same, I assume?"

"Sure."

"Anything at all?"

"Yup, it can be as lame and impersonal as you like."

Or as horrifically intimate and personal as he could bear.

For a moment he allowed himself to imagine how it might feel to straddle his lap, press him back against the seat, and wrap his hands around his throat as he confessed every terrible thing he'd ever done.

To whisper all his secrets against his ear and then seal them away in the silence of death.

Would he be shocked?

Would he struggle?

Would he regret baiting him so casually as the light faded from his eyes?

He chuckled a little at the thought, smiling as he relaxed back in to his own seat, the tension draining out of him for some inexplicable reason, "You don't think I have any deep dark secrets to confess?"

"I wouldn't say that," he answered, still smiling. "But you don't strike me as the sort to confess them to a random stranger."

It felt dangerous, this exchange, but all those warning anxieties had faded away, drowned beneath the overwhelming desire to test his limits.

It was the same heady rush battle brought in the fraught red and black whispering, screaming darkness of the world below.

What would it feel like to battle his shadow?

To cut it down?

To see it _bleed_?

He could feel the desire to know howling beneath his skin, in his blood, madness at work like a virus oozing through his veins and he wished he were there now, in that world where lies were peeled away to uncover the horror of truth. Free from the eyes of a world that never saw him for what he was. To pant and curse and keen and scream, to destroy anything that dared cross his past, to rip away the mask he wore and cast it aside; to seek quick, filthy pleasure as he knelt beneath the cover of darkness, still aching from battle, his heart racing, listening to the symphony of the damned as they moaned in lamentation beneath the ever-present rush of trains screaming down the rails until release finally wiped his mind clean of all that was unnecessary.

Until exhaustion freed him at last from the fever in his blood.

Only then would he be fit to don the mask once more, to step into the smiling, congenial persona he'd created to fool the world and leave the truth of himself behind to rot in the darkness until it was needed once more.

"Is anyone likely to do that?" He murmured, barely resisting the urge to reach down and adjust himself.

His control was better than that.

 _He_ was better than that.

"Beats me."

He shouldn't.

But it was dark and a quick glance down the row revealed that the other passengers in their row were sleeping, snoring, completely oblivious to the conversation.

No one was looking.

No one could see.

No one but _him_.

A joker.

A prisoner.

An enemy to be bested.

It was as before, as always, that feeling of reckless madness rising from the depths to tempt and taunt and force his hand, only this time his opponent was staring back at him, already balancing, dancing, upon the razor's edge, heedless of the danger, daring him to do the same.

"Fine," he murmured, smoothing his bare, sweaty palms down over his thighs as if he could banish so easily the feeling that they were engaging in something illicit. "I like dark coffee, late night television and the only thing I actually know how to cook are pancakes."

"Just pancakes?" He replied doubtfully, lips quirking into a wry smile.

That comment eased something within him, made him feel more confident in his decision to play along though he couldn't have said why.

"No, I can follow directions just fine so I'm certain I can cook many things."

Not that he'd ever tried.

He lacked both the time and the desire. He had vague memories of eating warm meals and his mother's smile, but those memories were faded and worn, washed red by the blood and violence that had followed, whatever softness there had been to them blotted and out and made unreal by all that had followed. If his thoughts lingered there he might wonder if those halcyon days had ever existed at all, if every smile had only been a thin veneer, a poor disguise to mask despair, but he never allowed his thoughts to dwell upon the past.

There was no need.

Not when he was so close to achieving his goal.

"Ah, so you like dark coffee then?" The boy who called himself Joker offered, calling him back from his quickly darkening thoughts.

"You don't think I enjoy late night television?"

He actually did, after a fashion, or at the very least he didn't hate it.

Long after some of his foster parents had passed out in chairs, snoring and reeking of beer, he'd sat curled in the shadow of the couch, squeezed in along the wall to watch the early morning monsters and robots and advertisements for things he did not want and would never need.

He never fell asleep there, that would have been dangerous, would have raised questions, would have attracted attention, but sitting there until his eyes were so heavy he'd barely made it to bed before passing out had been far better than lying in the dark waiting for nightmares.

It had been far easier to face those brief slumbering hours when he was too exhausted to care.

Still, in the years since, he had never owned a television of his own, even now when he could perhaps afford it. It hardly fit with the studious image he'd so carefully cultivated, after all, and the extra expense was unnecessary.

"And waste what precious little free time you have?" Joker commented drolly, wry little smirk still firmly in place as if he found the idea that he truly had no time for such things absurd.

He forced a smile he didn't feel.

"Point taken. I do enjoy coffee. Perhaps more than I should," he allowed.

"Is that possible?"

"It's a bit of an expensive vice," he sighed, shrugging, his expression schooled to convey humble, apologetic golden boy. It was the sort of expression he usually held in reserve for when he found himself on the receiving end of unwanted love confessions and old people who were always quick to express concern when the discovered he lived alone.

If Joker was the least bit affected by it, it certainly didn't show.

"Your job doesn't pay well?" He asked instead of blushing or stammering or any of the reactions he was used to receiving.

It was mildly annoying.

He'd worked hard to perfect that look.

"It pays well enough," he replied, smile so wide it made his face _ache_.

"I once caught six fish in a single day," Joker offered suddenly, sliding down so far in his seat that it seemed like might ooze right off onto the floor between them at any moment. "I took ballet lessons until I was twelve and my glasses are entirely for show."

He couldn't quite picture him taking dance classes and he'd seen the way he'd squinted reflexively when his glasses fell down his nose which left only the one option, strange and incredibly unlikely though it seemed.

"You like to fish?" He asked slowly, startled as his opponent burst out laughing the moment the question passed his lips.

"It's _relaxing_."

"Is it?"

Was he mocking him?

"It can be. You should try it sometime."

"Do you think so?" He found himself asking even though he couldn't imagine a world in which he would do any such thing. The whole idea of fishing was so completely at odds with the persona he'd worked so hard at crafting.

Not cool at all, really.

"Sure, why not?"

What was it about that damnable smile that made him want to do things he'd never normally even consider?

"I think I might look quite foolish. I haven't the least idea what to do."

"Just bait the line and drop it in the water, remember to keep a good grip on your rod and reel it in if you get a bite. Not much to it beyond that."

"So you say," he replied, doubtfully. "I enjoy history and English, but I'm terrible at math."

"No one likes history."

"I suppose that was an easy one," he admitted, though he hadn't really meant it to be.

"It was. Though it's difficult to believe you're terrible at math."

"It's true. I don't have the patience for it at all."

"Really?"

"Truly."

"Next station: Shinagawa."

The announcement came like a slap to the face and all around him the other passengers roused themselves to begin inspecting baggage or working the kinks from aching backs and sleepy limbs.

"Next station: Shinagawa."

Strange… somehow the trip had been much shorter than he'd been anticipating.

Or perhaps it just seemed that way.

Not that it mattered.

It was over now.

He rolled his sleeves back down and rebuttoned them quickly, before shrugging back into his jacket and pulling his gloves back on. A quick check of the latches on his briefcase revealed to still be firmly closed. Which he had, of course, expected, but it never hurt to be certain. He stood up slowly and busied himself with smoothing gloved hands across the wrinkles travel had worn into his clothing and very deliberately ignoring the fact that the boy across from him seemed to be making preparations to disembark as well.

"Are you switching at Shinagawa Station as well?" Joker asked finally, though the answer should have been obvious enough.

"I am," he replied, offering a wan, apologetic smile. "It seems we'll have to cut our game short."

It was for the best.

With every question it had felt as if he were dancing ever closer to the edge, to a confession of truths that would ruin him.

A fact that now, the tension of the moment shattered by their imminent arrival, seemed utterly ridiculous.

He was better than that.

"It's fine," his former opponent replied, snagging his backpack and shrugging it over his shoulder. "I need to switch over to the Yamanote Line. I'm heading to Shibuya."

His stomach dipped, a torrent of questions in his head, sudden inescapable anxiety rising to choke him once more.

Does he know who I am?

Is he doing this on purpose?

Why am I so….

"That's an interesting coincidence," he said instead of giving voice to any of them. "So am I."

"Then I guess we'll be together a little while longer yet."

"I suppose so," he replied as he shuffled between the seats, half hoping to lose him in the crowd and half dreading that he wouldn't attempt to follow him at all.

He could feel him just behind him as they sidled out into the aisle, murmuring apologies with careless civility though he didn't actually pay any foot he might have trod upon a second thought.

His phone buzzed unpleasantly in his pocket, a sharp reminder of where his priorities lie, of what he should be doing now. He slipped from his pocket as he stumbled into the crowd of people gathering new the doors.

 **is it done**

The number was unfamiliar, but he knew whose fingers had typed it by the impatience that seemed embedded within each character.

The lack of proper punctuation was irritating.

As was that implied admonishment that he should have contacted him immediately.

It made the frantic itch of madness stir beneath his skin once more, claws digging in, scraping down his back as something within him whispered, "Just kill him, be rid of him, be done with it."

He shuddered.

His mouth was dry and tasted of ash as he tapped out a reply, quick and terse and professional:

 **Yes.**

There was a touch at his shoulder, a murmur of words he couldn't make out and he found himself humming a distracted response. He had just begun to type a follow up message that was more inline with the sycophantic nonsense that man desired from him when the world suddenly shifted around him and he was thrown off-balance, grasping at air with his free hand as he was tossed forward by stilted motion to collide with the person beside him.

They're pressed so close together, hip to hip and chest to chest and it felt so _good_ that it stole his breath away, sent warmth flooding in every direction at once and stealing the choked beginnings of a gasp from his lips.

There was a hand at his waist, warm and steady, holding him close as if it wished to keep him and it was so improbable, so absurd, and still- for a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity- he _wants_ it to be true so badly it's almost impossible to breathe.

Except he is breathing, too fast and too hard, and he can _smell_ him, smell the sour reek of sweat and boy and rain and he can't think, his hands are numb and stupid and all he wants is to sink into it, phone dangling forgotten from his hand as he turned his face in against his throat and inhaled that scent again and again.

When was the last time he'd allowed someone so close when there was nothing to be gained from it?

"Okay?"

The word was just a puff of air, warm and damp as it gusted out against his cheek, his ear, and for a single mad moment he considered pressing closer or, worse, getting a hand between them and doing something truly regrettable.

There's a sound in his head like an echo of mourning as he forces himself to stop, to breathe, to _answer_.

"I'm fine," he doesn't quite snap, but it's a close thing. His heart is still in his throat and his head is still teeming with _ideas._

Vile, life and image ruining thoughts of falling to his knees, of forcing him to his, of pulling him into the darkness with him where they could rut together like an animals against those pulsing walls.

Of driving him mad, mad enough that he might bring himself off in the middle of this crowded train while he stood back and watched, an innocent bystander, shocked and appalled.

He could do anything, anything, _anything_.

He could.

But he _wouldn't_.

He had one goal, one intention, nothing else mattered.

 _Nothing._

He forced his body to remain still and loose beneath the press of Joker's hand even as sanity returned and with it the urge to shove him away before he could weaken once more.

He took his time slipping his phone back into his pocket; it gave him something else to focus on, an excuse to avoid addressing that lingering hand he couldn't quite bring himself to step away from entirely, "I'm sorry. What were you saying? About me reminding you of something?"

He was certain that was what he had said.

 _Almost_ certain.

"Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It was the way you were acting," he whispered the words like they were a secret mean for him alone, lips catching against his hair, his cheek, his ear. "The pretense. You said all the right words and made the right gestures in the right tone of voice, but the feeling just wasn't there. It makes me think you're not what you're pretending to be."

He was quite certain that if he turned his head right now- if their eyes met in this moment- he'd be able to see him, all of him, every terrible, ugly, vile thing he'd ever done.

There was a question on his lips, balanced on the tip of his tongue, waiting to be spat out into the world.

It felt dangerous to ask.

Like they were on the tightrope again, balanced precariously above the gaping maw of some hideous, carnivorous beast.

Flirting with danger was madness, but he found himself embracing it again in spite of himself, shifting closer. The innocuous words that slithered from his lips felt as soft and deadly as poison dribbling from the tip of a serpent's fang, "Then who am I?"

"I don't know," he answered slowly, each syllable a finger coiling around him, a firm and steady grip meant to pull him to completion. "But I'd like to."

There was a moan shuddering behind his teeth.

He felt like he was being swallowed whole by the promise of those words.

He _wanted_.

Oh, how he _wanted_.

To kiss him, to hurt him, to destroy them both, but most of all he wanted to show him. Show him the madness and corruption that blackened his soul, the true expression of everything that he was, of everything he'd willingly become.

And he wanted to be _seen._

Wanted him to look into the ink-black heart of him and discover whether he'd be met with horror or acceptance.

He turned to look into his face at last, to see his expression as he replied, "If you tell me your name, you might find out more than you ever wanted to know."

His eyes were wide and dark and looking into them felt like falling.

The train slowed and then he _was_ falling, or near enough that it made no difference, and for a long moment they were pressed together once more, close enough that he could smell him again, the scent of some harsh, sharp soap and the damp reek of rainfall that somehow lingered in his messy hair even after so long spent within the confines of the train. Lips brushed across his cheek but he could barely feel them for the heat of the flush that warmed his face, his body, left him feverish and reckless and not quite himself once more, his control shattered in pieces across the crowded, dirty floor of a passenger train.

A voice was reminding them to mind their step, shrieking warning of their pending arrival once more and then the press of that body against his own was gone and he was left chilled in the aftermath.

Humiliation and shame rushed in to fill the void as he watched him step away, gaze averted as if he felt nothing, as if he was nothing, as if nothing had happened at all.

"Kurusuakira," his opponent said suddenly, loudly, as it determined to be sure he was heard even over the crowd and the announcements. But the words were said in rush, and for a long moment they were nothing more than meaningless syllables run together like chalk in the rain, mumbled into the collar of his ratty t-shirt as if just the act of uttering them cost him dearly.

And, for a long moment, those syllables meant nothing, less than nothing, and then… and then they snapped into place, became a name that felt like a blow.

Her sweater had been black.

She had lost a shoe when the car had struck her. He'd seen it land, seen the heel break as it struck the concrete yards away from where she'd come to rest, head lolling, bleeding, as helpful Samaritans rushed to her aid.

He'd looked her up in the police database before he'd left Shibuya that morning.

She was 37, a clerk in some trading company though he hadn't recognized the name of it so it couldn't have been one of any particular importance.

Recently testified in the trial of a minor, Kurusu Akira, 17, charged with assault against unnamed man, 42, convicted and sentenced to 60 days, to be released to parental custody, 1-year probation.

There was, of course, no proof that that man had played some role in the arrest or that the trial had actually had anything to do with why he'd been sent to seek her out, but he'd never been the sort to believe in coincidence.

He wasn't sure why his name had stuck with him when hers had not.

But it had.

"I guess this is goodbye then, huh?"

He hadn't even realized he was looking back at him until he spoke.

His smile was as twisted and bitter as the rest of his expression. Whatever he'd seen in his face had clearly disappointed him, but he didn't seem surprised in the least. "See you around, Justice."

Before he had a moment to consider a response, Joker… _Kurusu,_ was already walking away, sliding through the crowd, disappearing into the push and crush of strangers moving out onto the busy platform beyond the train door as the warning bells chimed.

After a moment's hesitation, he followed, slipping between the closing doors, fingers gripped painfully tight around the handle of his briefcase.

He doesn't need to, of course, the name would be enough, a name was all he would ever need to find him again, to summon his true self from the darkness and destroy him, but still he followed. He stepped quickly through the press of people moving about the platform and took the stairs up two at a time, his eyes tracking the slump of Kurusu's shoulders through the crowd as if he couldn't bear to loose sight of him even for a moment.

His face was still warm and his hands were still trembling.

His name was still echoing in his head like the beat of a distant drum, a thousand questions swirling through his mind.

He couldn't wait.

He needed it to be done.

And Shibuya suddenly seemed impossibly far away.

He just wanted it _done_.

That was all.

Done.

Over.

Those brief fantasies extinguished along with the life that had inspired them, rendered impossible, the anxiety such thoughts stirred within him still so fresh in his mind they made his skin itch and his teeth ache.

If he were gone, it would be like none of it had ever happened.

Everything would be fine.

He could still fix this.

He was in control.

Up ahead, Kurusu paused at a map to trace bare fingers across the surface before settling briefly against a destination and pushing himself away from the sign, setting off once more down the corridor.

Shibuya.

Of _course_ , he was going to fucking _Shibuya_.

Had there ever been a chance it was going to be anything else?

It was a simple matter to slip through the crowd on the platform with the ready offer of an apologetic smile and murmured apologies.

He kept his head bowed and his face carefully turned away from each person he nudged his way past until he was finally able to break through the crush to step up beside him on the platform.

The moment he emerged from the crowd he could feel the weight of his attention even though he made no move to turn and greet him, choosing instead to merely watch him from the corner of his eye.

He clutched his briefcase in front of him as if it might obscure the way his body was reacting to that attention, to the discomfort still simmering heat through his veins.

He was in control.

He _was_.

Later, he wouldn't be able to recall why he'd said it when there were so many strangers about that might overhear him, might recognize his name, might remember he was there standing beside this boy in his last minutes of his short, sad life.

But in the immediacy of the moment, there had been no thought, not even a moment's hesitation, the admission had been as simple and reflexive as drawing breath as he stood beside him staring out across the empty tracks to the wall beyond, pitted and stained by the passage of water and years.

"Akechi," he murmured and saying it felt like relief, like digging a troublesome thorn from tender flesh. "Akechi Goro."

If he paid more attention he was certain he would haven been able to hear the squeal of brakes, feel the rumble of the oncoming train, but in the moment all he could truly hear was the thunder of his heart in his head.

He'd expected the words to drop like a bomb, to have the same impact that Kurusu's words had had on him, but they didn't. Instead Kurusu merely glanced at him, openly curious, obviously surprised, but it was plain to see that he did not recognize the name anymore than he'd recognized him.

Perhaps he really _wasn't_ as well-known as he thought he was.

Perhaps he'd been worrying needlessly about being recognized at _all_.

He laughed, wincing at the somewhat hysterical edge of relief he heard running like an undercurrent beneath the sound, "You really don't know who I am, do you?"

"Did you think I did?"

Did he?

 _No._

But he'd hoped.

Somehow it felt as if what he had to do would have been easier if he'd known.

If Kurusu had simply been playing him.

If he were a liar too.

"Most people do," he sighed, the words tasted sour on his tongue. "Even the ones who lie and say they don't. But you're not a liar, are you, Kurusu-kun? Just a joker."

His smile was slim and tight and as sour as the taste on his tongue, "Everyone is to one extent or another, aren't they?"

"A joker or a liar?"

"A bit of both, probably," Kurusu replied, a huff of laughter giving his words a wry and bitter twist.

"Jaded."

"Realistic."

The air stirred around them, the scream of the oncoming train growing louder by the moment.

It was time.

He reached out carefully to press a hand against the small of his back, thumb brushing against his backpack as his palm settled against him.

Just one little push.

That's all it would take.

No one was paying them the least bit of attention.

There was no one to see, no one to know.

Just one push was all it would take to banish this complication from his life forever.

He wasn't sure why he was hesitating, wasn't even certain that he truly was or if what felt like hesitation was merely the last bracing inhale before the final decision was made.

She had tripped, stumbled into the road before he'd done anything more than tap at her elbow.

She had done all the work for him.

All he'd had to do was watch.

"It was nice talking to you, Akechi Goro," Kurusu sighed, glancing down the tunnel towards the shine of headlights playing across the lens of his glasses' making clear the train's imminent arrival.

There was such finality to the words.

It felt like a dismissal.

Did he not realize that he was about to be murdered in a train station in Shinjuku?

Did he not sense the danger at his side?

Or did he simply not care?

Kurusu Akira's life was in shambles. He'd been able to read between the lines of that report well enough to know that, to guess at truths that don't matter and never would.

People would just assume that he'd jumped.

No one would think to question it.

It should have been a simple decision.

Just one little push.

"Was it?" He found himself asking instead.

What was he playing at?

What did he hope to gain?

"Yeah, it really was."

Such ridiculous sincerity.

So painfully honest.

He'd probably been trying to save that woman.

Not that it had mattered in the end.

No good deed went unpunished.

Someone like Kurusu Akira… he'd probably been doomed from the start.

The train blew his hair back as it passed them by, but even before it did he was already stepping back, away, his hand shaking as he tucked it away in his pant pocket to hide the tremor of foiled adrenaline.

It didn't matter.

It was better if he waited anyway.

 _Cleaner._

The other way wasn't quite as messy.

Wasn't so… _intimate_.

And dead was dead, after all.

It hardly ever mattered when it happened or how, just that it did.

Besides even on that crowded platform there was always a chance that he might be seen and recognized and he had no illusions about what fate awaited him if he became more liability than asset.

It could wait.

 _He_ could wait.

He knew something of patience after all.

They stood together silently on the crowded train. Not quite close enough to touch or close enough that anyone would think they even knew each other at all, but close enough that it was easy to fall into step with him when they both spilled out onto the platform at Shibuya Station, to move up the stairs side-by-side, arms bumping and brushing casually until they reached the busy corridor above.

A few steps more and Kurusu drew to a stop beside him, hitching a thumb over his shoulder to point toward another platform, clearly marked, "I'm heading to Yongen-Jaya, so I'm this way."

"Then I believe this is where we part ways, Kurusu-kun," he replied, relieved to have an excuse to leave him behind.

His fingers ached around the handle of his briefcase and the hand in his pocket might still have been trembling ever so slightly.

"I guess so," Kurusu replied, that wry smile still twisting his lips. "Don't suppose you'd be interested in getting coffee sometime?"

He hates him for asking.

Hates himself for caring.

He did not think about what it might have been like to invite him back to the stale air and worn furniture of his studio apartment.

About what it would be like to walk with him through damp city streets, sharing an umbrella as they traded sharp words, laughing, hands brushing again and again, fingers lingering and catching like a prelude of what was to come.

Or lead him up the creaking back stairs, off that narrow street in downtown Shibuya to his dented door that the landlord had never came to fix to matter how often he complained.

Doesn't think about how he would have looked slipping his shoes off in his entryway and padding across his threadbare carpet in just those mismatched socks because he'd never bothered to purchase guest slippers.

How he would look standing in the middle of what little floor was available between his bed and his table and his bike.

How he might fill the space that always seemed cold with heat and life.

How he wouldn't look surprised, how he wouldn't care at all that his apartment was cramped and messy and completely unlike the image we worked so hard to project to the world.

He doesn't consider for a moment what it would have felt like to peel that damp t-shirt from his skin and pressed him against the cool glass of the window.

The way the neon lights of the city might have looked painted across his bare skin.

What it might have felt like to press him down against his unmade futon and lick the taste of rainwater from his skin.

To let him peel away the congenial mask he wore to see the sneering, bitter horror within.

What it might be like to be known for who he truly was and desired _because_ of it.

Or if he does think of those things it's only for a moment that's like catching a glimpse of another life; a strange mad moment over as quickly as it began.

He has no space in his life for such thoughts, for such unnecessary desires.

It's too late to turn back now.

He remembers still, too well, the warmth of the bathroom, the feel of the clammy skin of her wrist beneath his fingertips.

It was a simple matter to turn his attention away from that brief mad infatuation as disgust with them both flooded his veins with ice, made his stomach churn and roil.

"I…" he began, forcing the appearance of reluctant indecision rather than snapping the negative as he wished to.

It felt as if he might shatter like glass dashed across the pavement if he spoke to soon or moved too quickly.

"I don't think that will be possible."

"Right," Kurusu laughed and the sound echoed inside all the empty, hollow spaces within him. "You're very busy."

He found himself staring into his face, unable to avert his gaze from the bitter curl of his lip.

He doesn't think about biting it.

He doesn't think about screaming.

He doesn't think about anything.

"I am," he agreed and that at least he doesn't have to fake, that at least doesn't have to be a lie, "though I won't insult you by pretending that's the reason."

"Well, I can't fault you for being honest, can I?" He replied, shaking his head and adjusting his backpack as he turned to go.

His smile was slim and tight and it feels like absolution.

It set his teeth on edge.

He wanted to lash out at him, to shut him up, to press a knife to his throat or a gun to his temple, and wipe that horrible understanding from his face.

"It's not pleasant, but you should still try to do it more often, it really is a good look on you."

The words are soft, kind in a way that chafes at his skin like sandpaper.

He has never hated anyone the way he hates Kurusu Akira in that moment.

"Take care of yourself, Akechi Goro."

"Yes, I will. I…" he swallowed back a thousand terrible responses that would never fit with the image he's worked so hard to perfect. "I did enjoy meeting you, Kurusu Akira."

And the worst thing about it is that it's true.

Or maybe the worst thing about it is that it doesn't matter.

That it never would.

Whatever it took.

He has gone too far down this path to have second thoughts now.

There was no room within him for what ifs or maybes or could-have-beens.

No room for distractions.

For boys who made some terrible, childish, aching part of him want _so badly_ to be something other than what he is.

But there was no salvation.

No magic wand that could be waved to revise his life.

And even if there were, he would reject it out of hand.

He was and always would be precisely what he was meant to be.

So instead he just watched him go.

Found himself still staring down the corridor blankly long after Kurusu had disappeared across the station and down the stairs towards Yogen-Jaya.

He could go home.

Turn and leave the station and go back to his apartment, maybe pick up something to eat at new sushi restaurant that had opened up downtown on his way. He wasn't hungry, but he would need to eat now since he had an early meeting in the morning and likely wouldn't have time for breakfast until after if he wanted to get a ride in before he was meant to be there.

He could call that man and give his report, pretend to be grateful for the praise that would be lavished upon him even though all he ever felt was empty.

There were a hundred ways he could postpone the inevitable if he were so minded.

But that way lay only madness and temptation.

It was best to just get it over with.

It was the easiest thing in the world to step back, to let that shadow world reach out and drag him down into the depths, into the moaning red and black horror the station would become.

 _This_ was the truth.

This was what lay beneath all those pretty lies and bright lights and clean streets, behind all those smiling faces and well-polished doors. This was the true writhing, skulking, treacherous, filthy soul of Tokyo and everyone in it.

The escalator ground to a halt before him as it always did when he began his descent down, down, down to where all those shadows lurked in the red and black darkness, wandering aimlessly as they waited patiently for his judgement to strike them down.

He can finally breathe here.

His clothes faded, replaced with the skintight vinyl that reflected the stained and cracked nature of his true self. It was always Loki here, always his trickster god waiting to clothe him when he prowled through those dark, noisy tunnels listening to the moans of lost souls and the rattle and rush of unseen trains.

He preferred Robin Hood in the palaces of the cognitive world these days.

Those glitzy, decadent horrors made him feel… righteous, as if every choice he made was right and pure and _just_.

But in the world beneath, Loki was the persona that called to him most strongly and with Loki's power wrapped around him he could admit the truth.

Here he could see himself as he was: selfish and horrible and single-minded and vicious in his pursuit of vengeance.

He had no need of illusions here.

He always felt better here, more at ease, more himself, as if some tremendous weight had been lifted from his shoulders. So much more comfortable was he here than in the world beyond.

Here, wandering the tunnels of this cognitive world, there was never anyone to question him.

His judgement, his justice, his madness, his world.

That was all that mattered in the world beneath.

There are no maybes here, only him.

Only darkness and judgement and power and madness and _death_.

If he wanted he could kill time destroying the lurching horrors that would flee from his scythe, from the madness he could inflict with a wave of his hand, a single touch, but there was no point in postponing the inevitable.

"Kurusu Akira," he called out.

His voice always seemed too loud, too real, against the distant rattle and rush of trains and the moans of the shadows that ruled the darkness and today was no exception.

But for once the darkness did not stir to answer his call, did not hurry to offer a soul for judgment.

He waits.

And waits.

But still, no shadow takes form before him.

No whispering, sinister, yellow-eyed fiend sprints from the darkness to heed his call.

Even those weak, formless generic monsters that usually haunt the tunnels have chosen to steer clear of him, choosing to haunt the distant tunnels and give him space enough to work for once as if they can sense his growing unease, the beginnings of doubt and rage, and fear what will come of it.

He waits.

 _Nothing._

"Kurusu Akira," he snarled once more, tossing his briefcase to the floor. It snapped open at the impact,the gun spinning loose across the floor.

He waits impatiently, but though he is certain more than enough time has passed for even the slowest, most slothful of shadows to answer his call, nothing ermerges from the darkness.

He is alone.

 _Nothing._

Nothing and no one and nothing.

"Kurusu Akira!"

Still nothing.

"Answer me!"

Rage is rearing up within him, coursing through his veins like rocket fuel, sudden and inevitable, searing through brain as his hands clenched and uncleanched at his sides.

He was such a _fool_.

To believe such a lie….

That wasn't his name.

It couldn't be his name.

He...

No.

No, it hadn't been a lie.

No, his name _was_ Kurusu Akira, he was certain of that much.

The moment he'd said that name, all the pieces had fallen into place and he'd known him.

He'd remembered him.

It couldn't be a lie.

Because he _knew_ it was true.

It had been in the database, yes, but also... he could _feel_ it.

He _knew_.

"Kurusu Akira!" He screamed into the moaning, howling, uncaring void and, again, there was no answer.

There was nothing.

 _Nothing_.

Had his power deserted him?

 _No.  
_

No, that wasn't right either.

He could still feel it in the dark vinyl that clothed him, in the rush of urgency and adrenaline that trembled through his muscles, in the mask that had adhered itself to his flesh.

No, _he_ hadn't changed.

Everything was as it had always been.

The screams and the darkness and the pulsing red between and the great hulking shadows that lurched down long lonely tunnels, stupid and dull, but with just enough sense now to stay well away from him.

It hadn't been like that in the beginning.

In the beginning he'd been...

He still remembered perfectly his first palace, that magnificent cruise ship floating across an endless choppy sea.

He'd been standing outside the Diet Building- waiting, wanting, hoping- to catch a glimpse of that man.

That man who had made his mother so _miserable_ , that man who was nothing to him, who hadn't cared, who wasn't worth the flesh that covered him.

He'd had a gun in his pocket.

Purchased with some of the small reserve of cash he'd found in that box along with that man's name and what few belongings she'd saw fit to leave him.

It was small, loaded with six bullets by the laughing man who'd sold it to him, who'd refused to load a bullet in the chamber and showed him to turn off the safety.

It seemed heavy... for something so small.

He wasn't sure what he was going to do with it just yet. Wasn't sure he was going to do anything with it yet, but there was something comforting about having it.

He'd been standing there for hours, loitering about, and the security men were starting to give him strange looks and he knew he couldn't stay much longer and that he'd probably have to cut his hair or something if he came back so they wouldn't recognize him.

And that's when he'd seen them.

Seen him.

He'd looked him up on the computer at an internet cafe the day before, so he'd known what he was looking for, but somehow the reality was... different than he thought it would be.

He was walking with a woman, leaning in close to her, laughing as she frowned and adjusted her glasses.

She had dark hair and a serious expression.

She was pretty.

"You certainly appears to have a type," he'd murmured, fingers clenched so hard around the bars of the black fence that surrounded the Diet Building that they ached constantly.

His mother had been slim and tall and beautiful too.

She'd had hair as black as the night sky, though hers had been long, long enough that it had draped over the back of the tub, coiled on the ground like a snake.

He could hear that man talking as they approached the gate, his voice jovial, his smile wide.

"… your research could be the very thing I need to steer this country into a better, brighter future."

"I care about my funding, Masayoshi," the woman replied, her voice cool and unimpressed. "I don't care about this country or your sloppy ship analogies."

He was laughing, a hand settling against the woman's waist, and he was still speaking, but he couldn't hear what he was saying anymore, couldn't hear anything over the pain pounding like thunder in his head as the world wavered and blurred before him.

He might have screamed.

He wasn't sure.

All he knew was that the pain was unlike anything he'd ever experienced before and his head had been throbbing with it, his eyes aching, watering, and he'd felt the impact of stone against his knees as he'd fallen to the ground, hands at his head as if they could keep him together when it felt like he was going to shake apart.

And then it was gone.

It was gone and he found himself alone in an empty world.

Before him had been the Diet Building- same as it ever was- as it had been every day he stopped there to stare up at it and wait with increasing impatience for that man to appear. Except there were no guards, no people, even the birds that normally flocked and pecked seeking crumbs that might have fallen from the street food eaten by the tourists that frequented the area and didn't know or care enough not to feed them.

He was alone.

"Hello!" He had called, his voice had echoed in the silence that surrounded him, a weak, thready thing filled with fear.

There'd been no one and nothing to answer him, just the Diet Building looming over him, huge and imposing.

In the end, he'd gone inside simply because he hadn't been able to think of anything else to do, anywhere else to go for help.

He'd started laughing when he'd stumbled through the door and found himself on the deck of that enormous ship. He'd remembered their conversation and thought maybe he'd gotten heat stroke or something and passed out, fallen and hit his head and everything that had happened since was really just some weird dream he couldn't escape.

No, not a dream, a _nightmare_.

The casino had been lousy with sycophants speaking of that man as if he were the second coming and it had also been teeming with faceless lurking shadows and great hulking beasts that made his heart race.

 _Monsters_.

Floor after floor of opulence filled with the faceless, anonymous masses that sung his praises, worshiped at his shrine, oblivious to his sins, to the idea that he was anything less than extraordinary.

It made him _sick_.

 _He_ made him sick.

He'd wandered for hours through the labyrinthine halls of that place, dodging the monsters once he'd exhausted all his bullets, and started using them as distractions so he could more easily escape. Finally, he'd stumbled out into the street once more had promptly vomited in the gutter as the world swayed around him as if he were still there, still standing on the ship feeling the waves shift the world by inches again and again.

Around him the world went on as it always had, people stepping around him, ignoring him as he knelt in the street trying to catch his breath and regain his bearings..

He was an eyesore, an annoyance, nothing more.

Eventually he got up, wiped his mouth against the back of his hand and stumbled away.

He hadn't seen him again that night or that week or the week after.

He'd found the app on his phone when he got home.

Though he hadn't understood what it was until much later.

He'd stumbled into the menacing world beneath Shibuya the following week.

He found himself face to face with the woman again when he'd fled the horrors beneath the ground and spilled into the passageway in Shibuya station, panting, terrified.

She'd smiled at him as if he were a marvel.

He'd stood in her half-formed palace, weeks later, marveling up at the Library of Alexandria towering above him.

Endless desert sands outside and endless rows of books within, filled to the brim with more of those monsters. Dark blobs that slouched through the stacks, oozing past shelves of dusty books and piles of scrolls, around dark busts, artifacts laid out for display.

He'd hid and run and hid again, collar damp with sweat, tie pulled loose around his neck.

He couldn't breathe, couldn't think, it was a nightmare from which he could not wake.

He'd seen himself there, some strange wild-eyed version of himself, seen some cold, clinical version of her studying him, _them_.

He'd found himself in that bathroom again and again, scrapped his nails away trying to claw and fight his way free of it.

She said she wanted to help him.

But the library was rife with tricks and traps.

Your fault.

Your fault.

Your _fault_.

If you'd never been born.

He was gasping, sobbing, but he was angry too.

So _angry_.

He'd wanted to destroy him, destroy him utterly, and that was the way to do it.

He'd ripped away the congenial mask he wore and become something more… less… something _other_.

His hate was a war drum that echoed the beat of his heart.

He would take what he loved.

Build him up and let him fall.

Hurt him.

Humiliate him.

Kill him.

He hadn't meant to harm her.

Hadn't meant to harm anyone in the beginning.

But he had.

He _had_.

And, in the end, he'd watched as that man swooped in and stole it all away.

He destroyed everything he touched eventually.

Why should this one stupid, worthless boy be any different?

"Kurusu Akira," he whispered once more, but the corridor remained empty and silent around him.

Or as silent as it ever was, anyway.

"Akechi Goro."

The darkness around him still did not stir, but that was nothing new.

It never stirred when he called upon his own shadow self though he'd never been certain whether that meant his intentions were pure and just or if it were simply because of the power he possessed.

Why wasn't he there?

He murmured a dozen other names: the grandmother from the station, the fan girls, classmates, strangers, prospective targets, the train driver he was meant to see to but hadn't yet.

Dozens of names, dozens of shadows, and he could feel them all there, rising from the darkness, some weak, some strong, but all there.

All _there_.

Somewhere.

Waiting to be found and driven mad by his power if he chose or killed by his hand or let be.

Always there, just waiting for him to choose what fate awaited them.

It should have made him feel calmer, should have eased his worry.

It didn't.

Because even when he said his name again the shadows still did not stir.

There was no Kurusu Akira to be found in the world beneath.

He trudged up the stairs to the empty shadowy platform and collapsed against one wall, his breath coming in panicked huffs as reality sunk in.

He couldn't find him.

He couldn't kill him.

He couldn't….

Was it because he was new to Shibuya?

Or was it something else?

Something _more_?

His presence on the train, his sitting across from him, his connection to that man and to his business in that place, those things couldn't be simple happenstance.

Coincidence after coincidence had piled up one on top of the next, each new addition making the pile more precarious than the last.

What was it he was meant to do?

What could he do?

What did it mean?

What was he?

Where was he?

Was he like him?

If he stepped from this subterranean hell now, boarded a train to Yongen-Jaya would be able to find him?

What would he do if he did?

Could he kill him?

Would he?

Of course he could.

He had done far worse things, after all.

Far worse things than killing some juvenile delinquent who no one cared about and no one would miss.

Why hadn't he simply pushed him in front of the train when he'd had the chance?

 _Why?_

He felt queasy as he stepped back into reality, licking his lips nervously. His mind and heart were still racing as he straightened his jacket and picked up his briefcase, stepping out into the sparsely crowded station and making his way with careful, measured steps towards the platform that would take him to Yongen-Jaya.

The problem, as it turned out, was he had no _idea_ where to even begin looking for him once he arrived.

Kurusu had told him nothing of his destination and he knew nothing about him other than what little information he'd gleaned from their conversation and what few tidbits he dimly recalled from the information he'd skimmed in the police database.

For all he knew Kurusu had already reached his destination- whatever it might have been- or gone to a different station altogether after he'd left him in Shibuya.

He knew this to be true.

Knew the chances of stumbling upon him by chance were minuscule.

Yet he still found himself wandering the damp, deserted streets of Yongen-Jaya, umbrella open to ward off the worst of the downpour as he peered into the bathhouse and laundromat and a darkened café and a grocery store that was just closing up for the night for some sign, some trace of him.

Nothing.

He trudged past darkened apartment buildings and a junk shop and a whole series of neat little houses tucked behind gates and high walls.

More nothing.

His shoes were ruined, his socks soaked through, and try as he might he could never seem to avoid the deeper puddles and his feet and legs were _freezing_.

He was halfway down the residential block with the houses for the third time when he finally admitted to himself that he was getting absolutely nowhere.

It was frustrating.

So frustrating he wanted to _scream_.

He closed his eyes and counted backwards from ten, not the least bit surprised that it did not help at _all_.

A quick glance at his phone revealed that he'd wasted nearly two hours on this pointless, utterly futile endeavor.

He turned back and headed towards the station, cursing himself for the hundredth time for being a complete and total...

The squealing protest of a rusty gate was the only warning he had before a hand caught at his shoulder, pulling him to an abrupt stop.

He jerked instinctively from beneath its grip, but the muddy road was slippery and he moved far too quickly to stay upright. He cursed as he fell back, arms pinwheeling frantically as if he could will his balance to return. Hands caught at his jacket and he heard fabric give and tear even over the drill of rain that seemed to muffle every other sound so completely and the next thing he was aware of was the ground seemingly rising up to meet him, hard, mud and water splashing up all around him, soaking instantly through his pants, his underwear.

His ass ached from the impact and stung viciously where he'd somehow managed to land on a sharp rock or a bottle cap or… _something_.

He'd lost his umbrella in the tumble and the falling rain was quick to take advantage of the absence, pouring down relentlessly, ruining his carefully-styled hair and soaking through his ruined jacket as well as the shirt beneath. He felt- and likely looked- like a drowned rat.

His image would be utterly ruined if anyone caught a photo of him like this.

His face felt hot and his stomach sour with embarrassment and the certainty that he would gladly murder the entire neighborhood if he had to in order to keep this particular humiliation a private one.

He wiped water from his face, grimacing as he only succeeded in smearing mud across his cheeks.

He glared at the person who had caused him to fall, glad to see they hadn't escaped their foolish actions unscathed, as they knelt in the mud, groping about blindly for….

 _Oh_.

Kurusu's glasses- when he fished them out from where they'd landed beneath him- were hopelessly twisted, one lens obviously cracked even through the thick layer of mud that covered them.

 _Shit._

In a moment of inspired panic, he tossed the mangled things away, pitching them carelessly towards the alley wall when he realized Kurusu was still looking for them in the muck and hadn't yet seen him with them.

He wasn't sure he could stomach having to apologize to him.

Besides, it wasn't as if they could get _more_ broken.

The glasses landed near the broken handle of his umbrella and cursed himself anew for never bothering to get a new one when he knew this one was on the way out. He'd thought he'd been being frugal, but clearly it had actually been a stupid and short-sighted decision.

Kurusu sighed, finally turning his gaze up to him, wiping dripping wet hair from his eyes and nudging it to the side. His clothes are soaked through and splattered with mud and with his hair plastered to his face and neck and his glasses missing, he looked like a different person altogether.

"Are you lost?" He asked, lips quirked in a queer little twist of a smile.

He had had a very elaborate excuse planned.

Lies and truth married together into a story he knew he could sell, that he was certain would be compelling enough to lure Kurusu back to Shibuya where he could drag him into that shadowy world and force the truth from his lips, whatever it might be.

He'd spent most of the last hour putting it together, refining it, never allowing himself to believe until that last moment that all his searching would come to nothing.

It had been a very good story.

He had spent a lot of time on it.

But now that he'd been given the opportunity to use it what came tripping off his tongue instead was: "Yeah, I think I am."

Kurusu offered him a damp hand and the ghost of a smile, "Guess that makes us two of a kind."

Even through his glove and and a layer of mud, Kurusu's hand still felt warm when he took it.

 **\- Fin-**


End file.
